Digital and Social Media

Papers in this track cover a wide range of topics, disciplines and approaches in the area of digital and social media (DSM), fulfilling our intention that this track be a convening platform for researchers to share and discuss their cutting-edge research. This year, the track presents 68 papers, organized into 14 minitracks:

Citizen Journalism and Social Media: examines how phenomena like social media about breaking events are impacting news coverage and how such contributions can be captured and maintained for longer-term use.

Collective Intelligence and Crowds: considers new sociotechnical configuration of knowledge creation, and crowdsourcing. Included also is the analysis of social interaction as a way of describing underlying social structure, and in particular the social construction of identity and roles.

Critical and Ethical Studies of Digital and Social Media: addresses two themes: a) studies that critically interrogate the role of DSM in supporting existing power structures or realigning power for underrepresented or social marginalized groups, and b) studies that raise awareness or illustrate the ethical issues associated with doing research on DSM.

Data Analytics and Data Mining for Social Media: focuses on research that brings together social media (or social networks) and data analytics and data mining. It includes quantitative, theoretical and applied papers.

Decision Making in Online Social Networks: explores and extends, as well as challenges, existing knowledge of online social communities and networks and decision- making.

Digital and Social Media and Enterprise: studies the use of social media in organizations, along with the opportunities and challenges addressing issues related to the role of enterprise social media in work.

Digital Location: engages with research that investigates digital locational data. It brings forward papers that address the production, capture, and study of location information through both technical and theoretical perspectives.

Games and Gaming: relates to digital games and sociality, examining, for example, sociability, social practices, communities (in-game, out-game, across multiple spaces or time), use of social affordances, and other social dimensions.

Learning within Digital and Social Media: examines leading edge use of technology, research methods and system design to analyze and support learning in social networks. Its focus includes tools and social theories of networking and learning, such as social networking, networked learning, collaborative learning, viral learning, and social capital.

Network Analysis of Digital and Social Media: studyies insightful ways that network analysis can be used to better understand social and digital media. Network analysis can reveal the underlying structures and help to discover the dynamic interactions among network components.

Persistent Conversation: explores digitally persistent conversation and its implications for learning, commercial transactions, entertainment, news, politics, and other forms of human interaction; to raise new socio-technical, ethical, pedagogical, linguistic and social questions; and to suggest new methods, perspectives, and design approaches.

Social Media: Culture, Identity, and Inclusion: interrogates how social media are being adopted in diverse communities and the new norms and practices that are emerging from this use.

Social Networking and Communities: focuses on social media and their interrelations with communities (online and offline) in the context of work, personal life, and education.

Values, Power, and Politics in Digital Infrastructures: considers how infrastructures—the underlying material properties, policy decisions, and mechanisms of interoperability that support digital platforms—are designed, maintained and dismantled, thus contributing to debates about sociotechnical aspects of digital and social media, with a focus on data, knowledge production and information access.

Minitracks:

• Citizen Journalism and Social Media
• Collective Intelligence and Crowds
• Critical and Ethical Studies of Digital and Social Media
• Data Analytics and Data Mining for Social Media
• Decision Making in Online Social Networks
• Digital and Social Media for Humanitarian Logistics
• Digital and Social Media and Enterprise
• Digital Location
• Games and Gaming
• Learning within Digital and Social Media
• Network Analysis of Digital and Social Media
• Persistent Conversation
• Social Media: Culture, Identity, and Inclusion
• Social Networking and Communities
• Values, Power, and Politics in Digital Infrastructures

Kevin Crowston
School of Information Studies
348 Hinds Hall
Syracuse NY 13244-4100
Tel: 315-443-1676
Fax: 315-443-5806
Email: crowston@syr.edu

Karine Nahon
Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, and
Sammy Ofer School of Communication at The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya
The Information School at University of Washington
P.O.Box 167
Herzliya, 4610101, Israel
Tel: +972-9-9527272
Email: karineb@uw.edu