[Air-L] CFP: The Social Epistemology of Social Media, Special Issue of Topoi

[Boaz Miller]

                               Call for Papers

              [1]Topoi – An International Review in Philosophy

           Special Issue: The Social Epistemology of Social Media

   Paper submissions are invited for the special issue/collection of
   [2]Topoi on The Social Epistemology of Social Media This Special
   issue/Collection will bring higher citations and visibility to your
   paper rather than regular papers and attract more relevant readership
   due to its scope. Topoi is indexed in the Web of Science, currently
   with a 2022 IF of 1,4 and CiteScore of 2,8 and its editorial team is
   led by the Editor in Chief Prof. Fabio Paglieri and Associate Editor
   Prof. Marcin Lewinski.

   Guest Editors:

   [3]Glenn Anderau (University of Zürich) (lead editor)

   [4]Axel Gelfert (TU Berlin)

   [5]Boaz Miller (Zefat Academic College, University of Johannesburg)

   [6]Isaac Record (Michigan State University)

   DESCRIPTION:

   The development of the Internet and social media has had a major impact
   on the exchange of knowledge and our epistemic environment. While
   social media has made knowledge more accessible and allows for the
   bypassing of hegemonic gatekeepers, not all marginalized voices have
   profited from this to an equal extent. In addition, these
   socio-technical systems have facilitated the spread of epistemically
   harmful content and created online ecosystems in which harmful content
   thrives.

   Because of its relative novelty, the epistemic dimensions of social
   media have not yet been sufficiently studied. There is a lack of
   integrative frameworks which can allow for the theoretical and
   empirical study of the epistemic dimensions of social media. This
   special issue aims to rectify this by mapping out a social epistemology
   of social media that does justice to the twin desiderata of providing a
   unifying framework while acknowledging the diversity of concerns and
   practices.

   Apart from descriptive questions, this special issue is interested in
   answering normative questions regarding social media and the
   normativity of knowledge-oriented practices. A guiding idea is that we
   – as users, stakeholders and citizens, through individual and
   collective action – can aim to turn social media platforms into better
   epistemic environments which facilitate the spread of knowledge while
   safeguarding against the spread of epistemically toxic content.

   This special issue thus aims to bring internet scholarship into
   conversation with social epistemology. These two overlapping fields
   have much in common. Both are relatively young fields that study online
   putative knowledge-producing practices and dynamics. Both emphasize the
   mutual interactions of people and technology, and both are interested
   in real-life, non-ideal conditions. While Internet scholars have
   focused on empirical research methods (Altay et al. 2022; Marres 2017;
   Rogers 2019; Venturini and Munk 2021), social epistemologists have
   focused on theory and normative assessment (Frost-Arnold 2023; Miller
   and Record 2017; 2013; Simon 2014). Social epistemologists have also
   dealt with defining fake news (Gelfert 2018, Anderau 2021) and
   identifying the conditions under which fake news and other toxic
   epistemic content spread online, paying special attention to the
   interplay between technological affordance (Record 2013) and
   social-epistemic norms of posting and sharing (Arielli 2018; Gelfert
   2021; Marin 2021; Nguyen 2020; Record and Miller 2022a).

   Thus, in addition to social epistemologists, this special issue invites
   contributions from empirical researchers from cognitive sciences, media
   studies, and STS who share the main commitments and interests of social
   epistemology.

   Questions of interest for the special issue include, but are by no
   means limited to:

   ●       How may social media platforms contribute to epistemic justice?
   (Frost-Arnold 2023; Knöchelmann 2021; Miller and Record 2017)

   ●       Which strategies, e.g., fact-checking, nudging, and content
   moderation, are most effective at mitigating the dissemination of
   epistemically toxic content online? (Record and Miller 2022b)

   ●       What are the limitations and risks of such strategies?

   ●       How can we avoid the risk of public debate reverting to
   positivistic notions of facts? What, for example, might ‘fact-checking’
   mean in a world where ‘we can’t have our facts back’? (Marres 2018)

   ●       How do social media platforms afford novel speech acts, such as
   liking or sharing, how are they to be characterized, and what are their
   implications to the online dissemination of content? (Arielli 2018;
   Marsili 2021; Marin 2021; Record and Miller 2022a)

   DEADLINE: Please submit your paper by 15th March 2024. Should you not
   be able to meet this deadline, please contact the Lead Guest Editor
   (contact details below).

   SUBMISSION: Please use the journal’s Online Manuscript Submission
   System (Editorial Manager), accessible here [7]Editorial Manager® (
   [8]https://www.editorialmanager.com/topo/default.aspx ). Do note that
   paper submissions via email are not accepted.

   Author Submission’s GUIDELINES: Authors are asked to prepare their
   manuscripts according to the journal’s standard [9]Submission
   Guidelines.

   When uploading your paper in Editorial Manager, please select “SI:
   Social Epistemology of Social Media (Anderau et al)” in the drop-down
   menu “Article Type”.

   EDITORIAL PROCESS: All papers will undergo the journal’s standard
   review procedure (double-blind peer-review), according to the journal’s
   [10]Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance and reviewers will be
   selected according to the [11]Peer Reviewer Selection policies.

   Once papers are accepted, they will be made available as [12]Online
   first articles publications until final publication into an issue and
   available on the page [13]Collections.

   CONTACT: For any questions, please directly contact the Lead Guest
   Editor: [14]Glenn Anderau (University of Zürich)
   [15]glenn.anderau at philos.uzh.ch.

   REFERENCES:

   Altay, S., Hacquin, A. S., & Mercier, H. (2022). Why do so few people
   share fake news? It hurts their reputation. New Media & Society, 24(6),
   1303-1324.

   Anderau, G. (2021). Defining fake news. Kriterion, 35(3), 197-215.

   Arielli, E. (2018). Sharing as speech act. Versus, 47(2), 243-258.

   Frost-Arnold, K. (2023). Who Should We Be Online?: A Social
   Epistemology for the Internet. Oxford University Press.

   Gelfert, A. (2018). Fake news: a definition. Informal Logic, 38(1),
   84-117.

   Gelfert, A. (2021). Fake news, false beliefs, and the fallible art of
   knowledge maintenance. In The epistemology of fake news, eds. S.
   Bernecker et al. (pp. 310-333). Oxford University Press.

   Knöchelmann, M. (2021). The democratisation myth: Open Access and the
   solidification of epistemic injustices. Science & Technology Studies,
   34(2), 65-89.

   Marin, L. (2021). Sharing (mis) information on social networking sites:
   An exploration of the norms for distributing content authored by
   others. Ethics and Information Technology, 23(3), 363-372.

   Marres, N. (2015). Why map issues? On controversy analysis as a digital
   method. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 40(5), 655-686.

   Marres, N. (2017). Digital sociology: The reinvention of social
   research. John Wiley & Sons.

   Marres, N. (2018). Why we can't have our facts back. Engaging Science,
   Technology, and Society, 4, 1-21.

   Marsili, N. (2021). Retweeting: its linguistic and epistemic value.
   Synthese, 198(11), 10457-10483.

   Miller, B., & Record, I. (2013). Justified belief in a digital age: On
   the epistemic implications of secret Internet technologies. Episteme,
   10(2), 117-134.

   Miller, B., & Record, I. (2017). Responsible epistemic technologies: A
   social-epistemological analysis of autocompleted web search. New Media
   & Society, 19(12), 1945-1963.

   Nguyen, C. T. (2020). Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Episteme,
   17(2), 141-161.

   Record, I. (2013). Technology and epistemic possibility. Journal for
   General Philosophy of Science, 44, 319-336.

   Record, I., & Miller, B. (2022a). People, posts, and platforms:
   reducing the spread of online toxicity by contextualizing content and
   setting norms. Asian Journal of Philosophy, 1(2), 41.

   Record, I., & Miller, B. (2022b). Wrong on the Internet: Why some
   common prescriptions for addressing the spread of misinformation online
   don’t work. Communique, 105, 22-27.

   Rogers, R. (2019). Doing digital methods. Sage.

   Simon, J. (2014). Distributed epistemic responsibility in a
   hyperconnected era. In The Onlife Manifesto: Being human in a
   hyperconnected era, ed. L. Floridi (pp. 145-159). Springer.

   Venturini, T., & Munk, A. K. (2021). Controversy mapping: A field
   guide. John Wiley & Sons.

References

   1. https://www.springer.com/philosophy/journal/11245
   2. https://www.springer.com/journal/11245/
   3. https://www.philosophie.uzh.ch/en/seminar/people/research/theory_meylan/anderau.html
   4. http://www.gelfert.net/People/Axel/axel.html
   5. https://boazmiller.com/
   6. https://www.isaacrecord.net/
   7. https://www.editorialmanager.com/topo/default.aspx
   8. https://www.editorialmanager.com/topo/default.aspx
   9. https://www.springer.com/journal/11245/submission-guidelines
  10. https://www.springer.com/gp/editorial-policies/peer-review-policy-process
  11. https://www.springer.com/gp/editorial-policies/peer-review-policy-process#toc-49263
  12. https://link.springer.com/journal/11245/online-first
  13. https://link.springer.com/journal/11245/collections
  14. https://www.philosophie.uzh.ch/en/seminar/people/research/theory_meylan/anderau.html
  15. mailto:glenn.anderau at philos.uzh.ch