Digital and Social Media

Digital and social media (DSM) are firmly integrated into society, having become essential platforms for work, recreation, entertainment, learning and political discourse. Tools like email, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, WeChat, TikTok and Instagram are commonly used for communication, and changes to these services prompt significant concern and adjustments.

Streaming music and video have largely replaced physical formats like CDs and DVDs. Digital media challenges traditional news outlets, shifting how society gets information, a trend that the growth of generative AI is poised to amplify. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified these changes, but they have persisted. For example, U.S. movie theater attendance has returned to only 80% of pre-pandemic levels, while streaming and gaming revenues now surpass box office earnings.

Understanding the developments and implications of DSM remains a crucial task for both researchers and the public. To address this challenge, the Digital and Social Media (DSM) track covers a broad range of topics, disciplines and approaches, bringing together researchers to share and discuss cutting-edge research. This year, the track includes 59 papers organized into 12 minitracks.

Six minitracks gather research on different types of digital or social media.

Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies (formerly Mediated Conversation): studies of digitally-persistent conversation and its implications for diverse forms of human interaction that raises new socio-technical, ethical, pedagogical, linguistic and social questions; and that suggests new methods, perspectives, and design approaches for these systems. The fifteen papers in this minitrack cover themes such as the influence of AI and large language models on content creation, the dynamics of social media behavior and political campaigning, sentiment analysis and privacy concerns, how data journalism shapes online discussions, and the impact of online platforms on addiction and user engagement.

Games and Gaming: digital games and sociality, e.g., papers investigating sociability, social practices, communities, use of social affordances or other related social dimensions. The six papers in this minitrack explore player experiences and perceptions in virtual environments, the implications of game shutdowns, the role of game design and modes on performance and engagement, and the evolving definitions of gaming genres.

Streaming Media Services: fosters understanding of the production and usage of, and user participation in social live streaming services. The two papers in this minitrack cover the relationship between video marketer-generated and video usergenerated content and how viewers respond to the cyberbullying on streamers by gifting.

Digital and Social Media in Enterprise: studies of 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. The three papers in this minitrack address the intersection of personalization, engagement, and storytelling in online fundraising and organizational contexts.

Generative AI and AI-generated Contents on Social Media: the technology, applications and potential benefits and negative impacts of the use of artificial-intelligence-generated content, considering diverse stakeholders. The six papers in this minitrack examine how new technologies are changing the landscape of digital content creation and communication, from improving advertising strategies and facilitating discussions on sensitive topics to generating diverse fake content, analyzing economic effects on creative industries, enhancing audiovisual workflows, and optimizing social media graphics for greater engagement.

Finally, new this year,

Web3 Dynamics in Social Media examines the integration of blockchain, the metaverse, and non-fungible tokens into social media platforms. The paper in this minitrack studies the impact of disclosing digital assets on social connectivity on social media platforms.

Two minitracks advance methodology for research on DSM.

Data Analytics, Data Mining and Machine Learning for Social Media: research that brings together DSM and data analytics, data mining and machine learning, including quantitative, theoretical and applied approaches. The nine papers in this minitrack explore a variety of themes: analyzing social media and online content like Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and Reddit; examining digital collaboration tools and privacy concerns such as doxing; and developing prediction models and studying information processing for crowdfunding, online opinion diffusion, and news validation.

Applying Netnographic Research in the System Sciences Context—Insights, Illustrations, and Intersections: This minitrack features papers that develop, conceptualize, use, and adapt netnography, the application of ethnographic approaches to phenomena represented through digital traces. The four papers in this minitrack examine the transformative power of social media in redefining identity after sudden disability, methodological advancements in netnography, the authenticity of tourism influencers’ online presence, and experiences of AI-generated erotic images of cyborgs.

Finally, the papers in four minitracks examine a particular phenomenon or related phenomena as it or they unfold in the setting of DSM.

Decision Making in Online Social Networks: explores, extends and challenges existing knowledge of decision making in online social communities and networks. The paper in this minitrack investigates the impacts of using markdown in questions on answers in online Q&A.

Culture, Identity and Inclusion: interrogates how social media are being adopted in diverse communities and the new norms and practices that emerge from this use, with a focus on culture and identity. The five papers in this minitrack explore the complexities of social media discourse in social movements, the challenges of addressing affective polarization, the evolving usage patterns of digital platforms among diverse populations, and the intersection of technology and inclusivity, particularly regarding disability rights and economic inclusion on both national and global scales.

Social Media Influencers and Influencing: the impact and influence of social media influencers on society and the rise of virtual influencers. The six papers in this minitrack investigate topics such as the role of influencers and issue advocates in shaping public engagement with climate change and consumer behavior on social media, narrative persuasion, parasocial relationships, and the implications of impersonation and verification.

Finally, another new minitrack, Online (In)civility and Mental Health, seeks to use online trace data to understand online (in)civility, mental health dynamics of individuals and communities and the social and environmental phenomena that impact them. The two papers in this minitrack address the role of social media data in inducing anxiety and political affiliation and mental health during crises.

Looking across the minitracks, the ever-growing power of social media data for answering pressing social question is apparent in many of the papers. A welcome observation is the increasing diversity of social media platforms and real-world settings being studied, with the recognition that life is increasingly mediated by these technologies. In sum, the track offers a home for research on diverse types of DSM, in diverse settings, with diverse methods and examining diverse phenomena, but joined by an interest in these novel media.

Kevin Crowston
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
crowston@syr.edu