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CALL FOR PAPERS

Elsevier Online Social Networks and Media Journal (OSNEM)

Special issue on
Disinformation, toxicity, harms in Online Social Networks and Media

Submission Deadline: Continuous submissions until March 31st, 2025
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/online-social-networks-and-media
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Online Social Networks and Media have revolutionized society, and are now a key part of how most people work, live, socialize, find information and entertain themselves. But whilst they have generated huge benefits, leading to unprecedented connectivity across the globe, online social networks have also enabled the spread of hazardous and dangerous behaviours. Chiefly, this is generated by disinformation campaign and fake news, generation and spread of toxic content, deliberate or unconscious generation and spreading of harmful content. Generative AI is exponentially exacerbating the diffusion of toxic content, while, quite interestingly, not being equally used to counteract harmful behaviours. On the other hand, content moderation techniques are emerging, aiming at providing practical tools to fight against online harms driven by toxic content.

This special issue seeks high-quality scientific articles which examine, via a data-driven approach, the emergence of harmful behaviours in OSNEM, as well as tools and methods to fight against them. We particularly encourage papers which focus on online hate, misinformation, disinformation, toxic content. Data-driven approaches, supported by existing or new publicly available datasets, are strongly encouraged. Within this framework, topics include, but are not limited to:

- The efficacy, usability and appropriateness of different technological counter measures to tackle online harms;
- The impact of large trigger events, such as COVID19.
- Niche and smaller online platforms, including how they differ from mainstream spaces.
- Modelling and analysis techniques to predict online harms, as well as their dynamics and associated factors.
- Modelling and analysis techniques to study the dynamics of disinformation and harms spread;
- Techniques to detect and categorise online harms.
- The role of (generative) AI with respect to online harms creation and fighting.
- Biases in methods and analyses, including how explainable, accessible, fair, transparent and interpretable they are.
- Integrated analysis of different online harms (e.g. studying how misinformation, hate and extremism intersect).
- Cross-platform and inter-platform dynamics, such as user migration from mainstream to niche or emerging spaces.
- Strategies for online harm dissemination used by malicious actors and others.
- Reputation systems to support the detection - or mitigate the effects - of online harms.
- Computational fact-checking for OSNEM.


Online Social Networks and Media is a multidisciplinary journal for the wide community of computer and network scientists working on developing OSNEM platforms and services and using OSNEM as a big data source to mine, learn and model the (online) human behaviour. Manuscripts only based on questionnaires, even focused on the reported use of social media, are outside the scope of the journal. On the other hand, the journal welcomes papers which present analyses based on big data mined from social networks/media.

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Schedule
Manuscript submission deadline: continuous submission until March 31st, 2025 (*)
First notification: two months after the submission
Expected publication: papers are published a few weeks after acceptance.

Guest Editors
Marco Conti, IIT-CNR, Italy
Andrea Passarella, IIT-CNR, Italy
Arkaitz Zubiaga, Queen Mary University of London, UK
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Instructions for submission

Manuscripts must not have been previously published nor currently under review by other journals or conferences. If prior work was published in a conference, the submitted manuscript should include a substantial extension of at least 35% novel contributions. In this case, authors are also required to submit their published conference articles and a summary document explaining the enhancements made in the journal version.

The submission website for this journal is located at https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/online-social-networks-and-media
Please select ''VSI:disinformation-toxicity-harms'' when you reach the ''Article Type'' step in the submission process. To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly identified, for consideration by the special issue, the authors should indicate in the cover letter that the manuscript has been submitted for the special issue on “Disinformation, toxicity, harms”.

(*) Manuscripts can be submitted continuously until the deadline. Once a paper is submitted, the review process will start immediately. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (in the first issue available as soon as the paper is accepted). All accepted papers will be listed together in an online virtual special issue published in the journal website.

For further information, please contact the guest editors at {m.conti,a.passarella} at iit.cnr.it, a.zubiaga at qmul.ac.uk