OPINION – First edition of the CLACSO-UNQ essay competition “Political communication, fake news and democracy”

The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the National University of Quilmes, Argentina (UNQ) announce the results of the call for essays “Political communication, fake news and democracy”, a proposal aimed at the presentation of essays by a single author on the challenges of communication, politics and rights in the digital age, organized jointly. 

This initiative aims to develop a collection of books that seeks to reflect on fake news and democracy. In this first edition, special emphasis was placed on topics associated with the following thematic areas: 

-Political communication 

-Technopolitics and network movements 

-Fake news and democracy

-Disinformation

-Cyberactivism

-Lawfare

We congratulate the authors who responded to this call and submitted their essay proposals.

Twenty-six applications were received, of which, after technical and formal review, 16 were in a position to be qualitatively evaluated by an International Editorial Committee to consider the quality, relevance, timeliness and coherence of the proposals according to the call.

The evaluation process was carried out by an International Committee made up of the following experts: Amparo Marroquin (El Salvador), Gissela Dávila (Ecuador), Alejandra Cebrelli (Argentina) and Claudia Villamayor (Argentina).

The evaluation, based on anonymized work and ensuring double-blinding at all times, assessed the quality of the essay proposals submitted, as well as their soundness and intellectual contribution to the issues addressed in the call.

In light of the quality and relevance of most of the works, the organizing institutions decided award 2 honorable mentions, In addition to 4 proposals selected for publication as an open access digital book established in the terms of the call.

Within 120 days of this notification of results, the authors of the four selected proposals must submit their final essays according to the guidelines defined in the call for papers, which will be communicated to them in due course via private message. Once submitted, the essays will undergo a further review for inclusion in the digital publications, which will be a joint publication between CLACSO and UNQ and will be available in open access, free of charge.

According to the evaluation carried out, the list of the 4 essay proposals selected to be published as an open access digital book co-published by CLACSO and UNQ and the 2 special mentions.