[AISWorld] JMIS Special Issue on Fake News

[Dennis, Alan R.]

Journal of Management Information Systems

Special Section on Fake News on the Internet

Due Date: April 30, 2020


The online generation and dissemination of false information (e.g., through Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other Internet media), commonly referred to as "fake news", has garnered immense public attention following the 2016 Brexit referendum, the 2016 and 2018 US elections, the 2019 Indian lynchings, and the 2019 rise in polio cases in Pakistan. Fake news undermines public life across the globe, especially in countries where journalistic practices and institutions are weak [3]. Some fake news is created to spread ideological messages or to create mischief whereas other fake news is created for profit, such as the Macedonian teenagers who created fake news sites to drive advertising [21].

Research shows that fake news spreads "significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly" than true news [23:1146] and has had major societal impacts [14]. All signs indicate that it will get worse as political activists, scammers, alternative news media, and hostile governments become more sophisticated in their production and targeting of fake news.

Fake news and other types of false information are also a matter of concern for business and management research and practice [2,8,18]. Businesses have engaged in deceptive communications such as greenwashing, astroturfing, false advertising and other types of false messages [4,13], but false content presented as news presents a novel range of issues for individuals, organizations, and societies [1,17].

The widespread adoption and use of information and communication technologies, particularly social and digital media, play a key role in the current wave of fake news and false information sweeping the globe [1,6,12]. We believe that the IS discipline can contribute significantly to the discourse, as it already has in related areas such as cyberdeviance [22] and deception [e.g., 5]. Our field can draw on its intellectual core of theories and empirical findings on the design, use, and impacts of IT artifacts at different levels of analysis. A nascent body of IS research on this topic is emerging [7,15,16,17,19]. Related areas such as review manipulation [e.g., 10] and social behaviors in online social networks [e.g., 9,11,20] can provide valuable lessons to apply to online fake news and false information more generally. Yet there is a dearth of evidence about many aspects, and many issues remain open to debate.

This Special Section seeks to expand this emerging work and mobilize a full-fledged research agenda on fake news within the IS discipline. We call for papers addressing interesting IS questions around the fake news phenomenon on the Internet. We seek a wide range of research in content, theory, perspectives, methods, and stakeholders affected. We encourage pure IS research as well as inter-disciplinary research with partners from journalism, communication, sociology, political science, and other disciplines.



Example fake news (FN) topics for the special issue include, but are not limited to:

  *   Different sources, domains, and purposes of FN
  *   Impacts of FN on users, groups, companies, and/or societies
  *   User attitudes and behaviors about FN, and the effectiveness of user interventions (e.g. education, nudges)
  *   Trust, authenticity, authority, and truth on social media and the Internet in general
  *   Social media companies' attitudes and behavior around the consumption and/or sharing of FN
  *   Effects of platform governance, management, and technical affordances on the spread and consumption of FN
  *   Technical, behavioral, economic, regulatory/policy solutions to reduce the consumption and/or sharing of FN
  *   Design of algorithms, social bots, curation systems, recommendation systems and their effects on the spread of FN, whether to promote or inhibit FN.
  *   Crowdsourcing innovations to counter FN
  *   Contribution of online communities in the incubation, spread, and/or detection of FN
  *   Business models, innovations and opportunities in news and media businesses to counter FN
  *   National, cultural, and institutional differences in the nature and dynamics of FN
  *   Organized disinformation operations on social media: sources, dynamics, effectiveness, and responses
  *   Social media manipulation and algorithmic "gaming" to encourage the spread of FN
  *   New theories around FN.



We welcome research using a variety of methodologies, and at any level of analysis, such as:

  *   High quality qualitative (e.g., interview, observation) or quantitative (e.g., experimental, survey) research of all kinds
  *   Archival and observational research using data drawn from the Internet
  *   Mixed methods research (e.g., surveys complemented with digital trace data)
  *   Research proposing and evaluating innovative artifacts (i.e., design science research)
  *   Comprehensive theory development papers.


Timeline

Authors are welcome to email an abstract or extended abstract to the Guest Editors prior to submission if they have questions about their paper's fit with the special section. Official submissions should be emailed to: ardennis at iu.edu<mailto:ardennis at iu.edu>

Due: April 30, 2020
Notification: July 15, 2020
1st Resubmission: October 15, 2021
Notification: January 15, 2021
2nd Resubmission: April 15, 2021
Final Decisions: June 15, 2021


Guest Editors

Alan Dennis, Indiana University, USA, ardennis at iu.edu

Alan has conducted several lab experiments and surveys on the consumption and sharing of fake news. He has written more than hundred research articles, and served as Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly. His other research interests include virtual teams (including virtual reality), NeuroIS, and designing IT to influence subconscious cognition. He serves on the editorial board of Journal of Management Information Systems.

Dennis Galletta, University of Pittsburgh, USA,  galletta at pitt.edu<mailto:galletta at pitt.edu>

Dennis has conducted studies in the related area of phishing (e.g., Moody et al. 2017) and has launched a two-study project to research fake news. He is an AIS Fellow, a LEO lifetime achievement awardee, and serves as Doctoral Director for the Business School. He has published over a hundred articles, conference papers, and books. He serves as an MIS Quarterly Senior Editor and an editorial board member of Journal of Management Information Systems.

Jane Webster, Queen's University, Canada,  jane.webster at queensu.ca

Jane has worked in areas related to fake news, including knowledge hiding, knowledge sharing, and greenwashing. She has served as a Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly and VP Publications for AIS. She has published over a hundred research papers, most recently focusing on information systems and technologies to support environmental sustainability.







References

1.         Allcott, H. and Gentzkow, M. Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31, 2 (May 2017), 211-236.

2.         Aral, S. Truth, Disrupted. Harvard Business Review, 2018, 3-11.

3.         Bradshaw, S. and Howard, P.N. Challenging truth and trust: A global inventory of organized social media manipulation. The Computational Propaganda Project, (2018).

4.         Dunlap, R.R. and McCright, A.M. Organized climate change denial. In J.S. Dryzek, R.B. Norgaard and D. Schlosberg, eds., The Oxford handbook of climate change and society. Oxford University Press, 2011.

5.         George, J.F., Gupta, M., Giordano, G., Mills, A.M., Tennant, V.M., and Lewis, C.C. The effects of communication media and culture on deception detection accuracy. MIS Quarterly, 42, 2 (February 2018), 551-575.

6.         Humprecht, E. Where "fake news" flourishes: a comparison across four Western democracies. Information, Communication & Society, (May 2018), 1-16.

7.         Kim, A. and Dennis, A.R. Says who? The effects of presentation format and source rating on fake news in social media. MIS Quarterly, 43, 3 (September 2019).

8.         Knight, E. and Tsoukas, H. When fiction trumps truth: What "post-truth" and "alternative facts" mean for management studies. Organization Studies, 40, 2 (February 2019), 183-197.

9.         Kuem, J., Ray, S., Siponen, M., and Kim, S.S. What leads to prosocial behaviors on social networking services: A tripartite model. Journal of Management Information Systems, 34, 1 (January 2017), 40-70.

10.        Kumar, N., Venugopal, D., Qiu, L., and Kumar, S. Detecting review manipulation on online platforms with hierarchical supervised learning. Journal of Management Information Systems, 35, 1 (January 2018), 350-380.

11.        Kwon, H.E., Oh, W., and Kim, T. Platform structures, homing preferences, and homophilous propensities in online social networks. Journal of Management Information Systems, 34, 3 (July 2017), 768-802.

12.        Lazer, D.M.J., Baum, M.A., Benkler, Y., et al. The science of fake news. Science, 359, 6380 (March 2018), 1094-1096.

13.        Lyon, T.P. and Montgomery, A.W. The means and end of greenwash. Organization & Environment, 28, 2 (June 2015), 223-249.

14.        Mathew, I. Most Americans say they have lost trust in the media. Columbia Journalism Review, 2018. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/trust-in-media-down.php.

15.        Moravec, P., Kim, A., and Dennis, A.R. Behind the stars: The effects of news source ratings on fake news in social media. Journal of Management Information Systems, (in press).

16.        Moravec, P., Kim, A., and Dennis, A.R. Flagging fake news: System 1 vs. System 2. In ICIS 2018 Proceedings. Association for Information Systems, San Francisco, CA, US, 2018.

17.        Moravec, P., Minas, R.A., and Dennis, A.R. Fake news on social media: People believe what they want to believe when it makes no sense at all. MIS Quarterly, (in press).

18.        Murphy, M. Study: Fake news hits the workplace. Leadership IQ, 2017. https://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/study-fake-news-hits-the-workplace.

19.        Murungi, D., Puaro, S., and Yates, D.J. Beyond facts: A new spin on fake news in the age of social media. In AMCIS 2018 Proceedings. Association for Information Systems, New Orleans, LA, US, 2018.

20.        Pan, Z., Lu, Y., Wang, B., and Chau, P.Y.K. Who do you think you are? Common and differential effects of social self-identity on social media usage. Journal of Management Information Systems, 34, 1 (January 2017), 71-101.

21.        Subramanian, S. Inside the Macedonian fake-news complex. Wired, 2017. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/.

22.        Venkatraman, S., M. K. Cheung, C., Lee, Z.W.Y., D. Davis, F., and Venkatesh, V. The "Darth" side of technology use: An inductively derived typology of cyberdeviance. Journal of Management Information Systems, 35, 4 (October 2018), 1060-1091.

23.        Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., and Aral, S. The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359, 6380 (March 2018), 1146-1151.


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Alan Dennis
Professor and John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems
www.kelley.iu.edu/ardennis<https://www.kelley.iu.edu/ardennis>
AIS President Elect (aisnet.org<https://aisnet.org/>)
Editor-in-Chief, AIS Transactions on Replication Research (aisel.aisnet.org/trr)<https://aisel.aisnet.org/trr>
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