If you are interested in online misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, join us in this session at the RGS-IBG conference in Newcastle!
Call URL: https://geoinfo.science/rgs-2022-geographies-of-misinformation/
The RGS-IBG Annual International Conference regularly attracts over 2,000 geographers from around the world. This year, the conference is taking place at Newcastle University, with in-person, online, and hybrid ways to participate.
Organisers
- Dr Andrea Ballatore, King’s College London
- Dr Monica Stephens, Durham University
- Dr Stefano De Sabbata, University of Leicester
Abstract
This session aims at providing an interdisciplinary forum to explore the intersections and tensions between online misinformation and the places from which it originates and that it influences. Participants will be encouraged to set a collaborative research agenda, shaping ideas for special issues, grant proposals, and further research initiatives.
In a world linked by fast-paced networked media, misinformation proliferates across platforms, social strata, and regions, influencing opinions and attitudes on migration, climate change, vaccinations, wars, political elections, and referenda, as observable in the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent invasion of Ukraine. In recent years, this “infodemic” has attracted researchers in sociology, psychology, political science, media studies, and data science, studying facets of political propaganda, conspiracy theories, and “fake news” produced by a variety of actors for profit or political gain.
Themes include but are not limited to: Where is misinformation produced and consumed? What is the regional variation in misinformation in terms of topics and actors involved? What is the spatial structure of misinformation flows? What locations are misinformation hubs and diffusion centres? What misinformation tends to concern proximal or distal topics and places? What are the differential patterns in misinformation in the Global North and South?
Adopting an inclusive definition of misinformation and disinformation, we welcome proposals from geographic data science, human geography, digital geography, political science, information science, computer science, behavioural psychology, and cognate fields. Given our commitment to mixed methods, we hope to see a variety of approaches across the quantitative and qualitative spectrum to uncover the uncharted spatialities of online misinformation.
Data Science in Place 