Trust, Misinformation, and Institutional Communication in High-Trust or High-Control Societies

This thematic issue explores the complex dynamics of trust and institutional legitimacy within “high-trust” or “high-control” societies as environments often characterized by strong state governance, developmental agendas, or regulated media ecosystems. While much of the current literature on misinformation focuses on Western liberal democracies facing institutional decay, this call shifts the lens toward contexts where public, community, and government organizations still maintain a central role in the social fabric yet face unprecedented challenges from cross-border information disorder.

We seek to understand how these institutions (specifically public agencies, health authorities, and community-led organizations) navigate the tension between maintaining social stability and addressing the viral nature of rumors, misinformation, and disinformation. By narrowing our focus to the public and civic spheres, we move away from broad corporate reputation management to examine how “communicative legitimacy” is built when the state is both the primary source of information and the main target of organized disinformation.

To ensure a cohesive scholarly conversation, we invite contributions centered on the following four pillars:

• Crisis and Health Communication: How public health authorities manage rumors and disinformation in environments where official narratives are traditionally dominant.
• State-Citizen Trust and Digital Governance: The impact of “paternalistic” communication styles on public resilience and the ethical boundaries of state-led fact-checking.
• Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding: How information disorder from external actors targets the institutional credibility of developmental states and their international standing.
• Influence and Platforms: The role of local influencers and “digital intermediaries” in either amplifying or mitigating distrust toward public institutions.

Methodologically, we encourage a diverse range of approaches, from computational discourse analysis and digital forensics to ethnographic interviews and comparative surveys, that provide empirical evidence on how trust is repaired when the “traditional” institutional contract is under fire.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Media and Communication is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.