[Commlist] CfP: "Communication Dysfunctions and Social Threats Associated with Digital Social Platforms"

•Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760) is currently running a Special Issue 
entitled "Communication Dysfunctions and Social ThreatsAssociated with 
Digital Social Platforms”.

* EXTENDED submission deadline: 30 NOVEMBER 2023

* Guest Editor: Javier J. Amores ((javieramores /at/ usal.es) 
<mailto:(javieramores /at/ usal.es)>)

* Contributions to this special issue will not require any Article 
Processing Charges (APCs) from the invited authors.

View the full call here: 
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/N4L92KUO9M 
<https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/N4L92KUO9M>


• The Call:

The new digital platforms have had numerous positive implications, but 
they have also generated new social threats, in addition to having 
aggravated some that already existed. Within digital environments, it is 
in social media where new communicationdysfunctions seem to have a 
greater presence and more serious consequences, due to immediacy, 
anonymity, global reach, andthe larger scale of communication processes. 
This new situation could seem positive because it favors participation 
and the free  and immediate transmission of information, something that 
could improve democratic processes. However, social networks seem to  be 
contributing especially to the deterioration of the quality and veracity 
of information, as well as empathic and pro-social  behaviors, and, with 
it, social peace and democratic quality. In fact, some authors consider 
that social media are becoming  less social every day (Bartlett et al., 
2014). Undoubtedly, there are many accounts that misuse these new 
platforms, taking  advantage of their potential to spread hoaxes and/or 
toxic speech on a large scale, to promote confrontation and intolerance, 
or  even to directly harass and/or threaten other individuals or 
minorities groups. Behind some of these accounts, there are automated 
 bots (Shao et al., 2016), which manage to make their speeches go 
viral. However, the vast majority belong to real people who have 
antisocial and potentially criminal behaviours, often hiding behind fake 
accounts and acting like trolls.

All this has made some traditional social threats associated with 
communication processes now acquire a greater scope and a more worrying 
dimension (Miró Llinares, 2016). The main ones and more studied would be 
misinformation and fake news, hate speech and ideological and political 
polarization. However, these are not the only problems that take place 
in these social media, but in recent years new and even more worrying 
practices have proliferated that threaten the dignity and integrity of 
individuals and constitute a serious attack on coexistence. Some of 
these would be cyber-harassment, cyber-stalking, cyberbullying, sexting, 
sextortion or grooming, but they are not the only ones.

It is clear then that, even having innumerable positive implications for 
society, social media have allowed the proliferation and aggravation of 
many social problems that seriously threaten social peace. For this 
reason, it is necessary to rethink the use made of these platforms and 
develop new methods that help us identify, study and monitor these 
behaviors, as well as new strategies and solutions to control and 
counteract them.

This call seeks contributions that address these lines of action, from 
studies that analyze and describe the risks and threats related to 
social platforms and the main victims and affected groups to those that 
explore and review the main causes and implications, and, especially, 
those that raise new social and methodological strategies to combat them 
or lessen their most negative consequences.

* Contributions to this special issue will not require any Article 
Processing Charges (APCs) from the invited authors invited (if approved 
for publication).

For detailed special issue info, please follow the link to the Special 
Issue 
Website:https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/N4L92KUO9M 
<https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/N4L92KUO9M>

•The Journal:

Social Sciences is fully open access. Open access (unlimited and free 
access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more frequent 
citations, as indicated by several studies. Open access is supported by 
the authors and their institutes.

The journal has recently received its first Impact Factor (1.7) for 
2022, and is ranked 69/265 in the Social Science-Interdisciplinary
category of the JCR. The last updated CiteScore of the journal is 3.2, 
Scopus = Q1 !

Social Sciences publishes on a wide range of disciplines including 
sociology, anthropology, political sciences and communication sciences.

•Submission deadline:

The EXTENDED submission deadline is 30 NOVEMBER 2023.
Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication 
elsewhere. Every submission should go through a thorough peer-review 
before acceptance. We also encourage authors to send a short abstract or 
tentative title to the Editorial Office in advance ((socsci /at/ mdpi.com) 
<mailto:(socsci /at/ mdpi.com)>).

---

For further details on the submission process, please see the 
instructions for authors at the journal website 
(http://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/instructions 
<http://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/instructions>).

Please do not hesitate to contact the journal or the guest editor for 
any further information or assistance.

We look forward to counting on your valuable contribution!

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