Palabra Clave - Call for Papers - Political Communication in Times of Polarization, Populism, and Post-Truth

2025-12-04

Call of papers “Political Communication in Times of Polarization, Populism, and Post-Truth”

 

Guest editors:

Daniel Barredo Ibáñez, University of Seville (Spain). dbarredo@us.es

Holli A. Semetko, Emory University (United States). holli.semetko@emory.edu

Agnieszka Hess, Jagiellonian University (Poland). agnieszka.hess@uj.edu.pl

Introduction

Contemporary political communication has become a key battleground in what is known as hybrid warfare. Social media brought about the coexistence of content produced and planned from above with content generated from below (Casero-Ripollés & López-López, 2025). Yet these platforms have also contributed to the spread of disinformation (Zhang et al., 2023), which dilutes political artifacts under the guise of informational narratives.

Disinformation is a global phenomenon and can be found on platforms globally (Lukito, 2024; Madrid-Morales, Wasserman & Saifuddin, 2024). Disinformation preceded both the internet and social media as documented in numerous accounts of the Russian KGB’s influence operations or active measures using disinformation in the Cold War era to influence elite actions, public opinion and electoral outcomes, in the west and in countries around the world (Andrew & Mitrokhin 1999; 2005). Similar evidence later emerged from Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg, this time using social media to influence the 2016 U.S. election (Lukito, 2019). Just as the U.S. was the KGB’s main adversary during the Cold War, nowadays the IRA employs fluent English speakers to create fake accounts on various platforms to impersonate Americans and spread disinformation that aligns with Russia’s goals of sowing discord and diminishing trust. The IRA has been described as a troll factory in recent studies (Linvill and Warren 2020; Krever and Chernova, 2023).

It is no coincidence that the European Union (EU) is actively enforcing regulations  by fining large social media corporations for instances of non-compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) of 2022, where the notion of “systemic risks” appears no fewer than 33 times, and an entire section — Section 5 — is devoted to preventing the dissemination of disinformation and hate speech, enhancing the protection of vulnerable groups such as children, and sensitive moments such as election campaigns in EU member states (Art. 34).

The EU’s Regulation on the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) came into effect on Oct. 10, 2025, which can fine platforms 6 percent of global profit in the first instance of “non-compliance,” and up to 20% for subsequent cases.  Potential fines were not stated as a reason by Meta for ceasing all “issue, political and election” ads in the EU as of Oct. 6, 2025, in advance of TIPA coming into effect, Meta instead described the TTPA regulations as “unworkable” (Meta 2025). TTPA regulations included such stipulations as having every EU citizen user provide written consent to receive “Issue, political and election” ads, have each platform label every ad as an ad, and create an Ad Library for the EU only when all EU member states and more are already in the public Meta Ad Library (Meta 2018).  Ads on Facebook and Instagram are simply posts from a user’s page, for which the user has paid to have the post “boosted”.

As of Oct. 6, 2025, one could no longer search on the category “Issue, political and election ads” for any EU member state, which means that all past ads are no longer accessible. Beyond political parties and leaders in election campaign ads, and between campaigns, ads by non-profit organizations such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Save the Children, UNICEF, Oxfam, Doctors without Borders will no longer exist on Meta platforms in the EU, nor will ads from prime ministers and EU leaders on the critical issue of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022 and continued bombing of Ukraine and drone activity over EU member states, nor on the Israel Gaza war triggered by the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, all COVID-19 ads from any such sources fell under the “Issue, political and election” ads category. Not only are these pandemic ads now gone from the Meta Ad Library, but in the next pandemic there will not be a large platform like Facebook or Instagram or Google’s YouTube for governments to advertise on (Hallin et al. 2024).

Social media platforms have potentially global effects due to two fundamental aspects: their reach across vast numbers of users, and their control (or lack thereof) over the management, editing, and segmentation of published content. Applying the principles of the Digital Services Act is highly complex, since the response from other states and regions is, at best, controversial. In China, some decades ago, the Great Firewall of China was developed — a complex technological framework designed to align the digital ecosystem with government interests (Barredo et al., 2023). In the United States, meanwhile, Donald Trump’s administration not only championed deregulation but even considered sanctioning the European Union or officials involved in enforcing the DSA (Pamuk, 2025, August 26). The regulatory environments in the U.S. and the EU could not be more different. 

Deregulation benefits those who control social media platforms, allowing them to attract more advertising revenue — even from dubious sources — and to exploit personal data in microtargeted campaigns, as occurred in the Cambridge Analytica case (Simchon et al., 2024). It also reduces management costs by eliminating the need to invest in human resources or concrete policies that promote accountability.

Deregulation, in turn, benefits disinformation — a phenomenon far from accidental. It arises from an expanding constellation of partisan outlets dedicated to “politicizing the truth” (Perloff, 2021, p. 10). Combined with the filter bubble proposed years ago by Pariser (2017), disinformation fragments the connected individual, linking them to the imaginary world of conspiracy theories and preparing them for messianism — and its sibling, authoritarianism.

Thus, populism finds in social media a powerful ally for reproducing its emotional message (Engesser et al., 2017). These platforms allow that message to be fragmented and freed from rational filters — as would exist in traditional media — while replacing real interaction with new forms of parasocial experiences (Caro-Castaño & Gallardo, 2022; Humprecht, Amsler, Esser, and Van Aelst, 2024). Within these same spaces, echo chambers foster intellectual isolation through exposure to narrowly constructed sets of sources and topics (Muhammed & Mathew, 2022). The combined use of Artificial Intelligence (Barredo, 2021) further enables the creation of low-cost content and micro-segmentation.

The result is the emergence of polarization and political radicalization (Stepinska et al., 2020) as the most visible effects. Although political polarization existed long before social media, just as disinformation flowed through “active measures” or influence operations run in many countries by Russia’s KGB during the Cold War era, social media has been shown to sow discord and hate between partisans and groups.  Polarization is a dynamic concept that shifts depending on the context (Semetko & Sundar, 2024) — differences this special issue seeks to explore.

Social media platforms provide the most dynamic environment for creating, disseminating, and sharing information and opinions. In addition, they provide fertile ground for increasingly diverse and multidimensional forms of public opinion shaping by various leaders, including those who are not human.  Given the key role of interactive media and the potential of social media to shape and (de)form public opinion, it is important to address issues related to challenges, potential approaches, and research methods in public opinion research. Specifically, this special issue aims to examine the relationships between contemporary political communication and three of its most significant outcomes: polarization, populism, and post-truth. This special issue will favour comparative studies with a critical focus and, especially, explanatory reach. Potential topics of interest include:

  • Media framing and agenda-setting in polarized contexts.
  • Emotional and affective polarization in digital environments.
  • The role of partisan media and echo chambers in shaping public opinion.
  • Disinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories in political ecosystems.
  • Cognitive biases and the circulation of false or manipulative content.
  • Platform affordances and algorithmic amplification of political messages.
  • The impact of recommendation systems on ideological exposure and polarization.
  • Cross-national analyses of populist and polarized media systems.
  • Methodological innovations for studying political communication and public opinion in hybrid media systems.

Author Guidelines: Articles must comply with the Palabra Clave journal's author guidelines (structure, originality, length, format, citation style, etc.), available at: https://palabraclave.unisabana.edu.co/index.php/palabraclave/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

Please note that only research articles in English will be accepted. All manuscripts must be submitted by September 30 to the following email address: dbarredo@us.es. Accepted articles may be submitted to the Palabra Clave Open Journal System (OJS) for peer review.

 Important Dates

  • Submission open date: June 1, 2025.
    • Erratum: Updated on June 1, 2025, to 2026.
  • Submission closing date: September 30, 2026.
  • Special issue publication: First half of 2027.

References

Aalberg, T., Esser, F., Reinemann, C., Strömbäck, J., & de Vreese, C. H. (Eds.). (2017). Populist political communication in Europe. Routledge.

Andrew, C., & Mitrokhin, V. (1999). The sword and the shield: The Mitrokhin archive and the secret history of the KGB. Basic Books.

Andrew, C., & Mitrokhin, V. (2005). The world was going our way: The KGB and the battle for the Third World. Basic Books.

Baden, C. (2025, March 25). Public opinion as interactive discourse: A conceptual approach for digital research [Plenary talk]. Contacts & Contrasts Conference: Opinions in Language Media and Education.

Bruns, A. (2023). From “the” public sphere to a network of publics: Towards an empirically founded model of contemporary public communication spaces. Communication Theory, 33(2-3), 70–81. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtad007

Gërguri, D. (2023). Fake news, information disorder in the digital age. Dukagjini.

Hallin, D. C., Mihelj, S., Ferracioli, P., Rao, N., Vanevska, K., Stojiljković, A., Klimkiewicz, B., Rothberg, D., & Štětka, V. (2024). Pandemic communication in times of populism: Politicization and the COVID communication process in Brazil, Poland, Serbia and the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 360, 117304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117304

Humprecht, E., Amsler, M., Esser, F., & Van Aelst, P. (2024). Emotionalized social media environments: How alternative news media and populist actors drive angry reactions. Political Communication, 41(4), 559–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2024.2350416

Krever, M., & Chernova, A. (2023, February 14). Wagner chief admits to founding Russian troll farm sanctioned for meddling in US elections. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russia-yevgeny-prigozhin-internet-research-agency-intl

Linvill, D. L., & Warren, P. L. (2020). Troll factories: Manufacturing specialized disinformation on Twitter. Political Communication, 37(4), 447–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1718257

Lukito, J. (2019). Coordinating a multi-platform disinformation campaign: Internet Research Agency activity on three U.S. social media platforms, 2015 to 2017. Political Communication, 37(2), 238–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1661889

Lukito, J. (2024). Global misinformation & disinformation special issue introduction. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 36(3), edae030. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edae030

Madrid-Morales, D., Wasserman, H., & Saifuddin, A. (2024). The geopolitics of disinformation: Worldviews, media consumption and the adoption of global strategic disinformation narratives. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 36(3), edad042. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edad042

Meta. (2018). Meta ad library. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&is_targeted_country=false&media_type=all

Meta. (2025, July 25). Ending political, electoral and social issue advertising in the EU in response to incoming European regulation. https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/ending-political-electoral-and-social-issue-advertising-in-the-eu/

Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 September 2022 on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector and amending Directives (EU) 2019/1937 and (EU) 2020/1828 (Digital Markets Act). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/1925/oj/eng

Regulation (EU) 2024/900 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 March 2024 on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, 20 March 2024, OJ L 2024/900. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32024R0900

Reinemann, C., Stanyer, J., Aalberg, T., Esser, F., & de Vreese, C. H. (Eds.). (2019). Communicating populism: Comparing actor perceptions, media coverage, and effects on citizens in Europe (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429402067

Semetko, H. A., & Sundar, S. S. (2024). Editors’ introduction: Global crises, contentious politics and social media. Political Communication, 41(4), 505–508. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2024.2359797

Stępińska, A., Lipiński, A., Piontek, D., & Hess, A. (2020). Populist political communication in Poland: Political actors – media – citizens. Logos Verlag.