Call for Papers: Communication Practices and the Ordering of Uncertainty
We invite submissions of papers for issue 2 (31) 2026 of “Władza Sądzenia”.
The thematic issue “Communication Practices and the Ordering of Uncertainty”, is guest-edited by Anna Radiukiewicz, Jerzy Stachowiak and Adam Konopka (Section for Research on Social Communication, Polish Sociological Association).
Contemporary social life unfolds within an atmosphere of uncertainty in which practices of social communication play a central role. Although the research on disinformation and the crisis of expert knowledge is well developed, we still lack approaches that treat anxiety, uncertainty, and contestation not as subjective reactions to deficits of knowledge or rationality, but as resources and frames for communicative practices — practices that stabilise existing orders of meaning as well as those that challenge or transform them. We want this thematic issue to become a space for in-depth reflection on the relationship between practices of social communication and the dynamics of an atmosphere of uncertainty.
We invite articles that examine uncertainty related to controversies that unfold as: (a) epistemic conflicts — disputes over knowledge where actors draw boundaries between what counts as rational or irrational, true or false, and where they negotiate the limits of legitimate scepticism toward expert and media knowledge; (b) identity conflicts — struggles over what appears acceptable or unacceptable, legitimate or illegitimate, including practices that defend autonomy and sustain symbolic authority in defining, undermining and redefining community; (c) political conflicts — disputes over what counts as civic or anti-civic, politically legitimate or unacceptable, including practices of collective mobilisation that take both “progressive” and “conservative” forms; (d) spatial conflicts — struggles over physical spaces, from sites of historical memory to contemporary arenas of social, international or ethnic contestation.
We particularly welcome contributions that:
● examine how actors articulate scepticism and criticism toward expert knowledge, state institutions, symbolic elites, and dominant narratives, and how these practices gain legitimacy as rational dissent, defense of autonomy, care for freedom or alternative definitions of social reality;
● study relationships between social communication and practices of shaping, stabilising or unsettling meaning-making, including styles of argumentation, strategies of (de)legitimation and the aesthetics of communication as symbolic resources for ordering uncertainty;
● analyse communicative alterations of contemporary capitalism, work culture and dynamics of the digital economy;
● show how interpretive and classificatory practices organise conflicts and collective mobilisation, providing foundations for the actions of social movements, protest repertoires, and other forms of both “progressive” and “backlash” civic engagement;
● locate such communicative practices in diverse arenas of public contestation, including debates over memory, identity, security, migration, technology, capitalism and the environment, as well as in struggles over public space and institutional crises;
● redefine relations among citizens, the state, experts, media, AI and other actors of social communication by demonstrating how uncertainty reshapes responsibilities, authority, and capacities for action.
Please submit your articles of around 40000 characters to wladzasadzenia@gmail.com or via the OJS platform: https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/ws/about/submissions
Editorial guidelines: https://wladzasadzenia.pl/informacje-dla-autorek-i-autorow
Submission deadline: August 31st 2026.
Planned publication: December 2026