[AISWorld] Special Section of JMIS on Fake News on the Internet, papers due April 30, 2020

[Jane Webster]

*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

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 <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
<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.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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jane Webster

E. Marie Shantz Chair of MIS

Smith School of Business, Queen’s University

143 Union St., Kingston, ON K7L 3N6  Canada

Tel.: 613-533-3163; Fax: 613-533-2744; email: jwebster at queensu.ca