Call for papers: Special issue on “Strategies to counteract autocratic political propaganda, social-media-boosted fake news, and conspiracy theories; empirical groundwork”
In recent years, spreading deliberately created misinformation on the internet and social media has made a significant challenge to the operation of democratic societies. Currently, this process is being viewed as an opportunity to undermine the democratic system by certain autocracies, and outright dictatorial governments. Currently, there exist no forceful methods of counteraction; in a way, this is a problem that the normal operation of democratic societies has created for itself. Thus improvement is in order. Although a special issue of a scientific journal cannot set the grandiose goal of finding the antidote, it can still reach out for empirical work that is relevant to this problem, in a broad sense, and which could, in turn, facilitate theoretical thinking about the challenge. For these reasons, we invite publications from disciplines including (but not limited to) social psychology, political psychology, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and psychology of personality which are empirical and may contribute to the generation of evidence about the above objective. As we know from the philosophy of science, even the best data underdetermines our theories and understanding, however, the lack of good data will do so even more badly. We invite authors to help make these first steps.
- The special issue welcomes papers on, but would not be limited to:
- Strategies to counteract autocratic political propaganda and fake news
- Psychological interventions aimed at reducing susceptibility to political propaganda, fake news, conspiracy theories, and misinformation
- efficient communication, and social influence;
- attitudes and outgroup hostility;
- factors behind trust/distrust in institutions,
- prejudice,
- racism and exclusion
- belief in conspiracy theories;
- relations between level of education, personality, political orientation, and belief in conspiracy theories;
- Machiavellian thinking;
- attitudes and personality traits of political leaders and their relation to power ambitions;
- individual differences in theory of mind ability, and their relation to Machiavellism.
- Submission
Only one paper per author is allowed.
Articles are expected in length of around 20 double-spaced pages (around 6000 words) including abstract, tables, and references.
Please refer to https://www.studiapsychologica.com/ for additional instructions.
Submissions to this journal are through the online submission system here: https://journals.savba.sk/index.php/studiapsychologica
Please visit the author guidelines to read the full submission details for the Studia Psychologica journal at: https://journals.savba.sk/index.php/studiapsychologica/about/submissions
Please ensure you select this special issue from the relevant drop-down menu on page 1 of the submission process.
- Schedule
Call for papers: May 25, 2023
Deadline for submission: September 30, 2023
Publication: Issue 3 or 4 (fall 2024)
- Special Issue Editor
Zoltan Jakab (MA, psychology; Ph.D., cognitive science), Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
