[Air-l] Call For Papers: Special Issue of JCMC on Social Network Sites

[Nicole Ellison]

Hi AoIRers,

I’m pleased to announce that danah boyd and I will be guest editors of a
special theme issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
focusing on social network sites. The call is below and online at: 
http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dmb/jcmc-sns/

Please note the deadline for abstracts is Nov. 28. I know many of you are
working in this area, so please consider submitting. 

Thanks, 

Nicole 


CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Theme Issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 

Social Network Sites: People, Practice, and Culture 

GUEST EDITORS:
• danah boyd, University of California-Berkeley
• Nicole Ellison, Michigan State University 

DEADLINES:
• Abstracts due: November 28, 2006
• Decisions on abstracts: December 8, 2006
• Full papers due: February 28, 2007 
• Anticipated publication: October 2007 / January 2008 

FOCUS:
Recently, social network sites like Cyworld, MySpace, orkut, and Facebook
have captured the public's attention and attracted millions of users. Such
sites typically enable individuals to create a profile that defines their
online personae through the use of photographs, text, and multimedia
elements. More importantly, social network sites enable individuals to
articulate their social connections visibly on the site, a practice that may
help individuals meet self-presentational and social goals. "Friends" links
offer users a window into an emerging and fluid social landscape, allowing
them to explore and interact with a larger network via profiles and the
communication tools they offer. Together, profiles, traversable "friends"
links, and communication tools comprise the backbone of social network
sites. This special issue seeks to bring together scholarship on social
network sites to highlight current understanding of the practices,
implications, culture, and meaning of such sites. 

There are currently hundreds of social network sites, spanning a wide range
of individuals, interests, and technological affordances. While the key
technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge in
these sites are varied. For example, music is the cultural glue of some
sites, while others gather people around particular interests, such as
political beliefs or pet ownership. Some sites cater to a wide variety of
people, while others target people based on race, age, sexuality, religion,
language, or nationality. Sites vary in the extent to which they incorporate
new tools, such as mobile technologies, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.  
  
This special edition will bring together experts from the fields of
information, communication, sociology, anthropology, HCI, policy, design,
and education to explore the different socio-cultural practices that take
place on social network sites. We are looking for papers that address social
network sites from a variety of perspectives and from different
methodological and theoretical traditions. 

Potential questions that submissions might address include, but are not
limited to: 
• What strategies do individuals use to craft an online presentation of self
in a profile, and for what audiences? 
• What privacy or other concerns emerge from use of these sites? What kinds
of policy decisions and educational practices might ameliorate these
concerns? 
• Can we predict social, psychological, or other outcomes from profile and
network analysis? 
• How can "friends" networks most usefully be visualized? What can we learn
from network visualizations? 
• How does the network structure differ among sites, and what are the social
and cultural implications of these differences? How does the structure of
networks in these sites compare to the networks of other communities? 
• What are the patterns of relationship development in these spaces? Do
individuals use these sites to meet new people or to maintain pre-existing,
offline connections? 
• What role do race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation
play in social network sites? 

While all social network sites allow participants to create a profile and
publicly articulate their social connections within the system, the line
between social network sites and dating sites, MMOGs, media sharing sites,
blogging tools, and other social community sites can be blurry. Rather than
enforcing a strict definition of what constitutes a social network site, we
ask authors to explain how their site of study fits into a rubric of social
network sites. 

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: 
Potential authors should submit a preliminary proposal of 500 words by
November 28, 2006, to danah boyd (dmb at sims.berkeley.edu) and Nicole Ellison
(nellison at msu.edu). TXT, RTF or DOC formats are preferred. 
Proposals should indicate (a) the central research question; (b) theoretical
and methodological frameworks that will be used in the analysis; (c) a
preliminary sketch of what claims the author(s) expect to make; (d) the
author(s) rubric of what constitutes a social network site and how their
research fits into this framework. While the proposal should include which
site(s) is being addressed, the author(s) can assume that the reviewers are
familiar with the site. Thus, it is not necessary to describe the site in
detail in the proposal. A brief author biography should also be submitted. 
Early submissions and questions are welcome. Authors whose proposals are
accepted for inclusion will be invited to submit a full paper of roughly
7,000-9,000 words for peer review by February 28, 2007. Anticipated
publication date for the special issue is October 2007 or January 2008. 
Since JCMC is an interdisciplinary journal, authors should plan for papers
that will be accessible to non-specialists, and should make their papers
relevant to an interdisciplinary audience.