Abstract
The concept of the dialogical network (DN) has been designed to study complex communications that typically occur in mass and social media (see Leudar & Nekvapil 2004 for a summary). Their most important characteristic is their spatially and temporally distributed character - participants do not all meet face-to-face. For instance: somebody claims something at a press conference on Wednesday; somebody else disagrees with her claim elsewhere, say on TV, on Thursday. The second important characteristic of a DN is that many media contributions are duplicated - several participants may report on the same point using more or less same wordings as in the reported contribution.
The concept of DN was worked out through empirical studies of media as they functioned in the 1990s. Since then, however, political, social, and cultural conditions, including various properties of media, have changed dramatically in most countries, and these changes have affected the shape of DNs. For example, in the 1990s there were not many happenings in DNs during the first day of the existence of a DN and one week seemed to be an appropriate analytical unit both for researchers and members. In contrast, current DNs may take a distinct contour during just one day and become cloudy and labyrinthine in a week or so. New technological enablers of rapid, extensive multiplication and associated changes in journalistic work practices might also contribute to the rise of 'emergent properties' in DNs, which have recently been added to the main characteristics of DNs (see Leudar & Nekvapil 2022).
The aim of this special issue is to grasp DNs as a changing phenomenon depending on the current configuration of societies and of technologies enabling new communication practices. The authors deal with DNs affecting or (even) constituting various fields of practice such as politics, art, international law and (of course) journalism and formed in the political, social, and cultural conditions of Europe (east and west), Asia and Africa.