[Air-L] Social Networking and Communities @ HICSS (Hawaii; deadline June 15)

[Dan Suthers]

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                  CFP: HICSS Social Networking and Communities
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       54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)
                January 5-8, 2021, Grand Wailea, Maui, Hawaii
      PAPERS DUE: June 15, 2020 (see http://hicss.hawaii.edu/authors/)

We call for papers that investigate social networks and communities
supported and/or complemented by social media and other social technologies
for work, learning, socializing, or economic or political processes. Papers
may address theory, design, practices, use or evaluation of social
technologies. "Social networks and communities" refers broadly to social
phenomena that may range from fully virtual to geographically based
communities, and includes communities of inquiry, interest, or practice;
epistemic communities and networked advocacy; as well as other collective
phenomena emerging within networks of individuals.

We solicit papers that examine relationships between social phenomena and
technologies, including how social phenomena are embedded or emerge within
technological settings, how communities use technologies to further their
goals, or how technologies otherwise influence or are appropriated by
social phenomena and entities. Individual actors as the unit of analysis
may also be included provided that communities and technologies are
explicitly involved in the analysis; e.g., how individuals relate to
communities via technologies. We are particularly interested in papers that
explore new models, theories and methods rather than re-applying and
repeating established results.

In order to leverage the interdisciplinary nature of HICSS and enable
dialogue between social and technological disciplines, papers may be
motivated by a broad range of theory-driven or data-driven perspectives and
methods, including for example but not limited to social network analysis,
content analysis, ethnographic investigations, and agent-based
simulations. We particularly encourage papers that: • advance our
understanding of social network growth, formation, structure and outcomes
through social media; • explore how socio-technical affordances relate to
social media use and outcomes; • interrogate entanglements of technology
and culture in community settings; • examine how information and
misinformation spread in social media and networks, and how algorithms,
bots, and social media design affect this spread; • evaluate design of
social media technologies and practices for effective community development
and maintenance; and • develop theories, models and principles of social
media design, use and outcomes.

Papers that examine how social networking and media are used to take
collective action on Covid-19 concerns or mitigate the impact of "social
distancing" will be of particular interest this year.

ABOUT HICSS

The Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, in its 54th year,
is one of the longstanding scientific conferences and is highly ranked
among information systems conferences. Diverse disciplines unified by a
focus on information technologies are woven together in a matrix structure
of tracks and themes. By attending HICSS you are not only reaching the
audience of your track and mini-track; you also have the opportunity to
learn about what is happening in related fields and meet leaders in those
fields. Other mini-tracks within the Digital and Social Media track are
particularly relevant: see
https://hicss.hawaii.edu/tracks-54/digital-and-social-media/#social-networking-and-communities-minitrack
and related pages for this and other minitracks.

Conference organizers are developing contingency plans related to Covid-19,
to be announced.

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Dan Suthers (Primary Contact)
Professor, Information and Computer Sciences
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Honolulu, Hawaii
+1(808) 956-3890
Email: suthers at hawaii.edu
Twitter: @dan_suthers

Ravi Vatrapu
Loretta Rogers Research Chair in Digital Enterprise
Professor of Computational Social Science
Department of Information Technology Management
Ryerson University
Toronto, Canada
Email: vatrapu at ryerson.ca
Twitter: @vatrapu