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Springer Datenbank-Spektrum
Special Issue on Trends in Narrative Analysis, with a focus on Fake News, Misinformation, and Bias

Submission Deadline: October 1st, 2025
Publication Date: DASP-1-2026 (March 2026)
https://link.springer.com/journal/13222/updates/27738188

Narratives shape how we understand the world, influencing perspectives, beliefs, and actions. In an age dominated by rapidly evolving information ecosystems, the potential for narratives to mislead, manipulate, or reinforce biases has become a significant concern, affecting individual and societal decision-making.
This special issue of Datenbank-Spektrum explores trends and advancements in narrative analysis to address these challenges. Contributions should investigate theoretical frameworks, computational techniques, or practical applications for understanding and mitigating the impacts of harmful or biased narratives across various domains. We encourage interdisciplinary perspectives from fields such as linguistics, artificial intelligence, data science, and ethics to advance narrative analysis in the context of information integrity.

Topics of Interest

We invite original submissions, including technical papers, case studies, survey articles, and position papers, on topics such as:
• Narrative Detection and Analysis: Techniques for identifying and analyzing narratives in large text corpora or multimedia content.
• Misinformation and Fake News: Models and methods for detecting fabricated or manipulated narratives.
• Bias in Narratives: Techniques for identifying and mitigating bias in narrative structures, datasets, or analysis pipelines.
• Ethical Narrative Evaluation: Frameworks for evaluating ethical considerations and social impacts of narratives.
• Cross-Domain Narrative Comparison: Tools and methodologies for comparing narratives across different languages, cultures, or platforms.
• Narrative Trust and Credibility: Approaches to assess the credibility and trustworthiness of narratives and their sources.
• Impact of Narratives: Studies on how narratives influence public opinion, social behavior, or policy-making.
• Narrative Generation and Transformation: Methods to create, adapt, or transform narratives to promote fairness and inclusivity.
• Legal and Ethical Dimensions: Legal perspectives on harmful narratives and ethical frameworks for narrative-driven content moderation.

Submission Guidelines
Paper Format: 8–10 pages, double-column format (refer to Springer author guidelines).

Languages: Contributions are accepted in both German and English.

Submission Platform: Papers should be submitted via the Springer Editorial Manager system

Important Dates:
Deadline for Submissions: October 1st, 2025
Publication of Special Issue: March 2026

Articles will undergo all of the journal's standard peer review and editorial processes outlined in its submission guidelines.

Guest Editors
Philipp Schaer, Technische Hochschule Köln, philipp.schaer@th-koeln.de
Timo Spinde, Universität Göttingen, t.spinde@media-bias-research.org