2020 Theme – “Diverse Voices: Promises and Perils of Social Media For Diversity.”

Join us on July 22–24, 2020 for the 11th annual International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an interdisciplinary gathering of leading social media researchers, practitioners, and analysts from around the world. The 2020 conference is hosted by the College of Communication, Studio Chi and the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University in Chicago, USA.

Until a decade and a half ago, large media companies and governments lorded over an oligopoly controlling the means for communicating with the masses. That oligopoly was (temporarily?) broken by the introduction of social media with its revolutionary promise to democratize civil discourse and civil society. It has offered diverse groups the opportunity to connect to one another and form communities of practice that ultimately can serve to strengthen their voice. However, in recent years, we have also discovered that connecting the world via social media leads to new challenges. When so many diverse voices are brought together on a massive scale, conflict is common. Interpretation of this conflict is itself diverse: do we see a rise of incivility or freedom from moral policing? Extremism or idealism? Distrust or critique? The very same digital tools that amplify voices of the marginalized can also be used to silence diverse voices online through online harassment, doxing, trolling, and other measures.

In this context, the International Conference on Social Media & Society invites scholarly and original submissions that explore key questions and central issues related (but not limited) to the 2020 theme of “Diverse Voices: Promises and Perils of Social Media For Diversity.” We welcome research from a wide range of methodological perspectives employing established quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods as well as innovative approaches that cross disciplinary boundaries and expand our understanding of the current and future trends in social media research, especially research that seeks to explore questions such as:

Can human society handle the connection of diverse and divergent (often conflicting) voices on social media? Is empowering every voice via social media a net good?
Under what conditions can social media build bridges across difference? When does social media reinforce division?
What social media affordances are good or bad in terms of supporting diversity, including but not limited to: race, class, gender, sexual, cultural, political and linguistic diversity?

What is the role of government regulation? Should social media be limited to activities that help to build strong societies?
Is it naive to think that giving everyone a voice will result in increased democracy?
And what is the role of social media in all of these? And how can social media platforms be used to empower marginalized voices?
Can AI and other automated tools help social media consumers and producers to overcome these challenges and provide online spaces for engagement with diverse voices? If so, how?

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
The International Conference on Social Media & Society (#SMsociety) is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. It is the premier venue for sharing and discovering new peer-reviewed interdisciplinary research on how social media affects society. Organized by the Social Media Lab at Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, #SMSociety provides participants with opportunities to exchange ideas, present original research, learn about recent and ongoing studies, and network with peers.

The conference’s intensive three-day program features hands-on workshops, full papers, work-in-progress papers, panels, and posters. The wide-ranging topics in social media showcase research from scholars working in many fields including Communication, Computer Science, Education, Journalism, Information Science, Management, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (Not Exhaustive)

SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT ON SOCIETY
Privacy
Trust & credibility
Political mobilization & engagement
Extremism & terrorism
Dis/Mis/Mal-information, aka…”Fake news”
Politics of hate and oppression
Health and well-being

SOCIAL MEDIA & BUSINESS
Brand communities
Influencers and consumer engagement
Consumer behavior & social media marketing
Public & customer relations
Cybervetting and HR

SOCIAL MEDIA & PUBLIC SECTOR
Government regulations of social media
Government social media management
Adoption, use, strategies and policies
Citizens’ engagement
Citizens’ privacy & security concerns
Public opinions on environmental issues

SOCIAL MEDIA & ACADEMIA
Alternative metrics
Learning analytics
Teaching with social media
University branding
Knowledge Translation/management

ONLINE/OFFLINE COMMUNITIES
Online community detection
Influential user detection
Identity and anonymity
Case studies

THEORIES & METHODS
Qualitative approaches
Quantitative approaches
Mixed methods
Opinion mining & sentiment analysis
Social network analysis
Theoretical models

BIG & SMALL DATA
Value of small data
Data mining and analytics
Sampling issues
Visualization
Scalability issues
Ethics
Data Access/Scraping
Data Biases

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Anatoliy Gruzd, Ryerson University, Canada – Conference Chair
Philip Mai, Ryerson University, Canada – Conference Chair
Raquel Recuero, Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil – Full Paper Chair
Ángel Hernández-García, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain – Full Paper Chair
Chei Sian Lee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore – WIP Chair
James Cook, University of Maine at Augusta, USA – WIP Chair
Jaigris Hodson, Royal Roads University, Canada – Poster Chair

HOST COMMITTEE at DePaul University
Bree McEwan, Communication Studies, Communication & Technology
Jill Hopke, Journalism
Hamed Qahri Saremi, Management Information Systems
Juan Mundel, Advertising
Paul Booth, Digital Communication & Media Arts
Enid Montague, Human Computer Interaction
Samantha Close, Digital Communication & Media Arts
Nur Uysal, Public Relations