[Commlist] CfP Disinformation-For-Hire and Click Farming

*Call for Papers*

*Disinformation-for-Hire and Click Farming around the World: Identities,
Incentives, Infrastructures*


*Special Issue of **/Social Media + Society/*
<http://journals.sagepub.com/home/sms>* (Open Access Journal)*

*Abstract submission deadline: October 15, 2021*

*Full paper submission deadline: March 1, 2022*


*Special Issue Editors: */Rafael Grohmann (Unisinos University, Brazil)
and Jonathan Corpus Ong (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA)/


 >From state-sponsored propagandists using paid troll armies, to
commercially motivated data analytics firms selling their toolkits to
politicians, and platform workers producing memes for overseas clients,
the global industry of disinformation production has only
professionalized and diversified. This special issue for /Social Media +
Society/ aims to deepen understanding about the social identities, work
arrangements, and political and commercial motivations of an emerging
class of digital disinformation workers. We are interested in critical
and interdisciplinary research that examines the political economy,
specifically the digital and creative industries that propel and produce
disinformation.

The special issue’s focus on business models and disinformation worker
identities in global context aims to expand on disinformation studies’
analysis of “fake news” and hate speech as content that require better
policing or fact-checking. It also aims to expand platform studies’
research agenda and consider the range of digital professionals and
entrepreneurs who buy and sell engagement on social media–with
pernicious political consequences especially in contexts where
dissenting voices are suppressed.

Thus, we solicit submissions that discuss the diverse worker hierarchies
and conditions, outsourced gig arrangements, money politics, and/or
regulatory loopholes in the promotional industries that enable the
strategic production of disinformation. We are interested in
interdisciplinary and ethnographic research that engages with the deep
stories of workers in “dark PR” firms (Silverman, Lytyvenko & Kung 2020;
Verwey & Muir 2019), data analytics firms (Briant 2021), Latin American
and Indonesian Instagram click farms (Lindquist 2021), and “propaganda
secretary” offices (Hassan & Hitchen 2019). We are also interested in
normative discussions about complicity and collusion in digital
industries as well as scholarly self-reflection about the challenges of
doing engaged research about disinformation (Ong 2020).

We are especially interested in submissions that shed light across these
themes:

* ethnographic portraits of paid trolls, meme producers, and political
strategists
* precarity, aspiration, and the tactics of resistance of digital
workers / disinformation producers
* the ethics of representing perpetrators; whistleblowers as
unreliable narrators
* participatory disinformation (Starbird 2021) and networked
disinformation
* the infrastructure, materiality, and “platform trees” (van Dijck
2020) of click farm platforms with mainstream social media
* moral justifications of disinformation producers (Ong & Cabañes 2019)
* the complicity of advertising and public relations to “organized
lying” (Edwards 2021)
* legitimacy, respectability, and plausible deniability; the role of
intermediaries or brokers in the disinformation industries
* mental health of workers in digital shadow economies
* the social proximities between content moderators and paid trolls in
the global South
* regulatory loopholes in political marketing and PR; experiments with
self-regulation and codes of ethics in digital campaigning (Udupa 2019)
* auto-ethnographic reflections of engaged scholars about their
experiences working with governments, platforms, workers, and
journalists to shed light on disinformation shadow economies

The special issue will include an interview with ProPublica's Craig
Silverman and a response to the contributions from Dr Joan Donovan.


*Timeline*

300- to 500-word abstracts should be emailed to
(rafaelgrohmann /at/ unisinos.br) <mailto:(rafaelgrohmann /at/ unisinos.br)> and
(jcong /at/ umass.edu) <mailto:(jcong /at/ umass.edu)> by October 15, 2021. The
abstract should articulate: 1) the issue or research question to be
discussed, 2) the methodological or critical framework used, and 3) the
expected findings or conclusions. Feel free to consult with the Special
Issue Editors about your article ideas and potential angles or approaches.

Decisions will be communicated to the authors by November 1, 2021. Full
papers of the selected abstracts should be submitted by March 1, 2022.

There is no article processing fee for this special issue.

*References*

Briant, E. (2021). Lessons from the Cambridge Analytica Crisis:
Confronting Today’s (Dis)information Challenges. /The Journal of
Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare/, 3(3), 125–127.
https://doi.org/10.21810/jicw.v3i3.2775
<https://doi.org/10.21810/jicw.v3i3.2775>

Edwards. L. (2021). Organised Lying and Professional Legitimacy: Public
Relations’ Accountability in the Disinformation Debate. /European
Journal of Communication/, 36(2), 168–182.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323120966851
<https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323120966851>

Hassan, I. & Hitchen, J. (2019, April 18). Nigeria’s Propaganda
Secretaries. /Mail & Guardian/.
https://mg.co.za/article/2019-04-18-00-nigerias-propaganda-secretaries/
<https://mg.co.za/article/2019-04-18-00-nigerias-propaganda-secretaries/>

Lindquist, J. (2021). Good Enough Imposters: The Market for Instagram
Followers in Indonesia and Beyond. In: Woolgar, S. et al (eds). /The
Imposter as Social Theory: Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and
Charlatans. /Bristol University Press.

Ong, J.C. (2020). "Limits and Luxuries of Slow Research in Times of
Radical War: How Should We Represent Perpetrators?" /Journal of Digital
War /1(1): 1-6.

Ong, J. C., & Cabañes, J. V. A. (2019). When Disinformation Studies
Meets Production Studies: Social Identities and Moral Justifications in
the Political Trolling Industry. /International Journal of
Communication/, /13/, 5771–5790.

Silverman, C., Lytyvenko, J. & Kung, W. (2020, January 6).
Disinformation for Hire: How a New Breed of PR Firms Is Selling Lies
Online. /Buzzfeed News/.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/disinformation-for-hire-black-pr-firms
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/disinformation-for-hire-black-pr-firms>


Starbird, K. (2021, May 6). Participatory Disinformation: The Big Lie
during the 2020 Election and the January 6, 2021 Attack on the US
Capitol. Twitter thread.
https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1390408145428643842
<https://twitter.com/katestarbird/status/1390408145428643842>


Udupa, S. (2019, January 31). India Needs a Fresh Strategy to Tackle
Online Extreme Speech. /Engage/.
https://www.epw.in/engage/article/election-2019-india-needs-fresh-strategy-totackle-new-
<https://www.epw.in/engage/article/election-2019-india-needs-fresh-strategy-totackle-new-> digital-tools.


Van Dijck, J. (2020) Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Visualizing
Platformization and Its Governance. /New Media & Society/, 1-19. Online
First.

Verwey, S., & Muir, C. (2019). Bell Pottinger and the Dark Art of Public
Relations: Ethics of individuality Versus Ethics of Communality.
/Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa/,
/38/(1), 96-116.
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