Hi everyone, Laura Iannelli, Luca Rossi, Augusto Valeriani and I are seeking panelists for an #AOIR2016 panel on "Researching Disinformation Within Hybrid Media Ecologies. Where We Are And Where We Are Going" (tentative title). --------- Panel description On friday November 13, a group of coordinated attacks hit Paris causing more than 130 victims. The frantic moments following the first fragmented news, the spread of rumors and the wide media coverage of the following days, highlighted all the strength and fragility of an hybrid media system in which new and old media logics compete and integrate. During the hours following the attacks, we have witnessed the spread of testimonies published on social media and widely diffused by legacy media, we have observed the emergence of forms of cooperation aimed at supporting the search for the missing and we have participated in the ritual of collective mourning with the hashtag #PrayforParis. At the same time, however we have also read numerous reports that, although eventually proved to be false, have contributed to shape the representation of those events. Contemporary information ecologies, by simplifying processes of production and circulation of news, could also facilitate the diffusion of false information and/or unverified news. In this context, new digital elites (i.e. bloggers, social media power users etc.), legacy media actors and non-elites are still in search of a strategy for real time verification and debunking. Previous studies emphasized the importance of echo chamber effects and "confirmation bias" (the tendency to consider true information that confirms what we already believe true) as the cognitive process that, at the same time, makes misinformation easy to spread and difficult to debunk. Peer networks play an important role as a source of confirmation or disconfirmation of rumors. As a result, homophilic and polarized communities represent a fertile ground for disinformation. Recent studies also pointed out the combined effect of "confirmation bias" and online communities often characterized by a high degree of homogeneity. Additional multidisciplinary research is needed to enlighten changes and continuities in the participatory processes that invest the media sphere and more specifically: - to understand the diverse forms of disinformation and their effects on the quality of contemporary democracies; - to explore the diverse existing practices of fact-checking and debunking in the disinformation cycle; - to analyse values and norms of newer and older dominant media companies, their policies and decisions on what contents and actors can become popular and can have voice in the hybrid media system; - to explain the relations among the broader participation of non-elite media actors in the production of misinformation and disinformation and the other forms of political participation involving citizens in contemporary democratic societies. --------- To be considered for this panel, we would need the AOIR-standard 1200-word abstract by *February 15, 2016* sent to fabio.giglietto@uniurb.it. We will notify our selected panelists by February 20 with any revisions required ahead of the AOIR deadline of March 1. Best regards, Fabio Giglietto Laura Iannelli Luca Rossi Augusto Valeriani