Dear all, Sharing the following call for papers on the question of "News Quality in the Platform Era"; please feel free to forward: https://www.ssrc.org/programs/component/media-democracy/news-quality-in-the-... Best, Connie ---- *How do we define and measure news in the platform era?* Defining “the news” has never been a straightforward proposition, but in the era of platform media, a number of factors complicate this task further. Beyond legacy media, today's news is transmitted by mobile phones, tablets, smart home devices such as Amazon’s Alexa, and algorithmically driven news feeds by many of the major platforms. In addition to the influence of the feeds, the content of news is increasingly produced by individuals without professional training, from dedicated bloggers monetizing content for niche audiences, to impromptu citizen journalists livestreaming to social media feeds. Mixed in is an ever-expanding cohort of websites that present themselves as traditional news organizations, but skirt journalistic norms, producing content ranging from opinion posing as fact to outright disinformation. For better or worse, what has counted as news in the Western tradition—and what made its way to news consumers—has historically been determined by a professional elite: news editors. Today, however, the gatekeeping role of editors is increasingly appropriated by technology: the search and recommendation algorithms that suggest content to ever greater proportions of news consumers. The result is that we rely heavily on technology, but lack a precise understanding of how that technology operates. How have ubiquitous content production, rampant opinion and disinformation presented as fact, and plummeting trust in expertise complicated the task—imperative in a democracy—of defining the news and measuring its quality? What counts as “news quality,” and can we imagine improvements or remedies to algorithmic or semi-automated recommendation and ranking systems? The Social Science Research Council <https://www.ssrc.org/> (SSRC), in collaboration with the NewsQ Initiative <https://newsq.net>, invites proposals for research about the nature and quality of news. In particular, we invite theoretical, conceptual, empirical, or applied research that suggests new approaches to—and actionable critiques of—algorithmic news dissemination. The workshop is tentatively scheduled to be held in New York City on November 12-13, 2020 (COVID-19 contingency details in the call), and will be chaired by Philip M. Napoli <https://sanford.duke.edu/people/faculty/napoli-philip-michael> (Duke University) and Regina Lawrence <https://journalism.uoregon.edu/people/directory/rgl> (University of Oregon). Funding will be provided for participant travel and accommodations. Further details can be found on the SSRC website: https://www.ssrc.org/programs/component/media-democracy/news-quality-in-the-... To apply, please send the following materials to mdapplications@ssrc.org by Monday, June 15, 2020 with “Application for News Quality Research Development Workshop” in the subject line: - Current C.V. of the author who will participate in the workshop (maximum two pages). - An abstract of up to 500 words. The abstract should clearly outline the main theoretical and/or empirical contribution of the proposed paper. - A short statement (up to 300 words) detailing your interest in the workshop and how it will advance your research agenda. If you have publications or projects that are related to the research detailed in your abstract, please feel free to list up to three citations in this document. -- connie moon sehat connieimdialog@gmail.com https://linkedin.com/in/connieatwork PGP Key ID: 0x95DFB60E