Digital and Social Media

A recent Royal Society Report (The Online Information Environment) explored how digital technologies have changed how people interact with information and the role that technologies could play in creating a better information environment. The report clearly documents several challenges that must be addressed and the need for policymakers, academics and technology providers to come together. This minitrack will bring together stakeholders from these groups to evaluate the impact of a changing information environment on society within the context of great power competition.

The past two decades of digital and social media have drastically reshaped the information environment. There has been a dramatic shift in how information is created, distributed and consumed. This shift has also led to a change in how we communicate. New technologies (including generative multimedia, mass advertisement and population-level data collection, micro targeting and psychoinformatics), are posed to continue to reshape the information environment. The use of technology such as social media platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics, have already been shown to create and distribute information campaigns at scale, and impact a much wider community at a greater speed.

This minitrack will explore what global information advantage means in the context of this new environment. This minitrack welcomes research that reports on lessons learned, or suggests new methods and perspectives to address questions such as:

• Will social media in its current form survive an onslaught of mass-generated and disseminated content?
• How will the mass commercial data collection of individuals and populations be leveraged by governments?
• What information will be trusted, and what does erosion of online trust mean for democratic and societal norms?
• How can technology solutions help tracking evaluate the impact of a changing information environment on society within the context of great power competition?

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Zena Wood (Primary Contact)
University of Exeter
z.m.wood2@exeter.ac.uk

Raul Harnasch
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Raul.Harnasch@ll.mit.edu

Timothy Davison
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
timothy.davison@jhuapl.edu

Kimberly Glasgow
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Kimberly.Glasgow@jhuapl.edu

Social media has become an integral part of modern society, transforming how we access information, connect with others, and engage in online communities. It plays a crucial role in daily life, but it also has the potential to influence public discourse in significant ways. Artificial intelligence further amplifies this impact by generating content—such as text, images, and videos—and analyzing vast amounts of online data. AI-driven algorithms can reinforce social and political polarization by curating personalized content and strengthening echo chambers. At the same time, these systems enable large-scale content analysis for research and commercial purposes, shaping how information is created, disseminated, and consumed.

This minitrack focuses on research that brings together digital and social media and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics. We welcome quantitative, theoretical, applied, or methodologically oriented papers whose approaches are within this scope, or in closely related areas (e.g., content mining, structure analysis, business intelligence, collective intelligence, and knowledge discovery). Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Analysis of emerging social media platforms
• Discovery, collection, and extraction of social media data
• Online reactions to offline events
• Online impacts on offline events
• Detection and mitigation of misinformation, disinformation, and deepfakes in social media
• Identification of, and response to, social media manipulation
• Opinion mining, sentiment analysis, and recommendation analysis
• Identifying and profiling influential participants, subgroups, and communities
• Automated content creation, including with generative AI
• Predictive and forecasting analytics based on social media content
• Trend analysis to identify emerging topics, ideas, and shifts
• Methodology-focused studies of systems or artifacts that harness social media data
• Visual analysis of online media structure, usage, and content
• Impact of online privacy policies on data collection or use
• Comparison of structured vs. unstructured techniques
• Social search, retrieval, and ranking
• Ethical challenges, biases, and fairness in content generation and social media analysis
• Cross-platform interactions, network effects, and information diffusion across social media ecosystems
• Real-time event detection and situational awareness through social media analytics
• Human-AI collaboration in content moderation, curation, and engagement optimization

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

David Yates (Primary Contact)
Bentley University
dyates@bentley.edu

Kevin Mentzer
Nichols College
kevin.mentzer@nichols.edu

Natalie Gerhart
Creighton University
NatalieGerhart@creighton.edu

The Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies minitrack focuses on the study of communication taking place on digital and social media. Communication is the making of meaning and culture among people, with growing interconnections with a world of human-machine interactions. In mediated form, communication can involve text, emoticons, audio, images, video, virtual or augmented reality, or any combination thereof. The minitrack welcomes research on all forms of digital communication, including interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication, as well as a wide variety of contexts for communication, such as news, politics, entertainment, education, social movements and activism, etc. Additionally, this minitrack attends to the emerging interplay of human-machine communication—as evident, for example, in recent developments of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and the tools they afford for conversation and communication.

This minitrack brings together researchers and innovators to explore Communication, Digital Conversation, and Media Technologies and their implications; to raise new socio-technical, theoretical, methodological, ethical, pedagogical, linguistic, and social questions; and to suggest new methods, perspectives, and design approaches. The minitrack is the successor of the Mediated Conversation minitrack, which itself was a successor of the Persistent Conversation minitrack (established by Tom Erickson and Susan Herring at HICSS in 1999). The original minitrack was focused on the novelty of conversational persistence. With the prevalence of mediated conversation in contemporary life and a much wider landscape of digital communication that has emerged in recent years, we are called upon to consider a broader field of issues. Examples of appropriate topics include but are not limited to:

• Communication dynamics (from mass to interpersonal to other forms) that shape the development of digital media spaces and their role in public and private life
• The role of artificial intelligence in communication, including in areas such as mediated conversation, news, and social media
• Ethics of communication, digital conversation, and media technologies: e.g., privacy, safety, deception, freedom of speech, security, and information warfare
• Human-machine communication and related forms of conversation (e.g., chatbots)
• The role of conversation in understanding the interplay between media producers and media audiences
• The dynamics and analysis of large-scale conversation systems (e.g., MOOCs and big data applications)
• Methods for analyzing communication, mediated conversation, and media technologies: qualitative, quantitative, data analytics, etc.
• Innovation in the intersections of communication, mediated conversation, and media technologies
• The dark side of mediated conversation: e.g., hate speech, bullying, information overload
• Domain-specific applications, opportunities, and challenges of communication, digital conversation, and media technologies (e.g., in education, healthcare, social movements, government, citizen participation, management, and news media)
• Studies of virtual communities and the discourses in digital spaces
• Novel properties of platforms as they relate to communication/conversation dynamics
• Power dynamics and conversational patterns among social media users
• The role of communication, conversation, and media technologies in knowledge management and organizations
• Conversation visualizations and analytics
• The role of listeners, lurkers, and silent interactions

For further details about the minitrack and its aims, see our revised website: https://communicationhicss.wordpress.com/

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Seth Lewis (Primary Contact)
University of Oregon
sclewis@uoregon.edu

Yoram Kalman
Open University of Israel
yoramka@openu.ac.il

Gina M. Masullo
University of Texas at Austin
Gina.Masullo@austin.utexas.edu

This 2026 tenth anniversary of the minitrack presents an opportunity to revisit and expand inquiry, attracting rigorous and creative research papers that fill today’s research voids, made all the more glaring in this post-pandemic era with its critical discussions of divides, exclusion, and identity issues, as well as renewed concerns and new sensitivities toward information sharing, data harvesting, and privacy. Further, emerging technologies, along with questions of power and trust, will continue to shape research topics, findings, and methods.

Issues related to digital and social media continue to take center stage whether in politics or policy, or in private, not-for-profit or public forums, implicitly and explicitly with an array of complex challenges related to culture, identity and inclusion. The political backlash against diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in countries like the U.S. raise questions about the ability of technology to support inclusive futures for all as innovations risk creating new types of divides. Exploring how social media technologies become interconnected with and embedded in existing socio-cultural contexts is essential to assess how these platforms affect power dynamics in society. This minitrack sets the scene for analyzing better how digital and social media can foster – or hinder – a more pluralistic community in multiple settings, especially in a world coping with dramatic changes and rising inequality. Technology-facilitated social media thus present opportunities for new frontiers of research as they interact with cultures, identities, and diversity.

In sum, this minitrack highlights multi-disciplinary and multi-method research centered on the three I’s of: internet; identity; and inclusion with an additional dimension of cultural contexts. To what extent does social and digital media shape identity and/or inclusion? Further (and less studied) are questions dealing with the ways in which cultural contexts may shape identity formation and even inclusion through digital and social media.

This minitrack welcomes research on the intersection of digital media, different inequalities, including but not limited to work that focuses on race, culture, gender, identity, and disability, recognizing that these often intersect with one another. Emerging technologies themselves connect with existing platforms and provide opportunities for incipient research on, for example, augmented reality, social media, and inclusion or, for another example, artificial intelligence, mobile apps, social media, and exclusion.  Longitudinal and/or comparative studies are particularly welcome.

Additionally, while this minitrack is open to a range of methods as noted earlier, both experimental, indigenous, and participatory research methods would add to past research contributions.  The list of potential topics below provides an indication of the range and depth of this minitrack’s possible topics for HICSS 59.

Potential Minitrack Topics and Themes:

• The roles of digital media in inclusion and/or exclusion post-pandemic
• Digital and social media roles and outcomes in effecting change with regard to bridging divides
• Inter-cultural and cross-cultural use of social media
• Artificial intelligence, digital media and digital divides
• Expressing identities in social media ecosystems
• Diasporas and social media
• Platform governance, anticipatory governance, and inclusion
• Crowdsourcing technologies and inclusion
• Accessibility and inclusion (especially in cross-cultural perspective)
• Audio engagement, social media, and inclusive marketing
• Designing social media for Inclusion
• Social media, identity and collective action
• Gendered social media
• The construction and circulation of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion and disability through social media use
• Influencers, social media, & inclusion
• Online harassment
• Identity enactment, adoption, and policing
• Reproduction of biases
• Aging and social media
• Inter-generational use of social media
• Impact and influence of social media on diversity
• Social media, online learning, and inclusion
• Participatory platforms and implicit bias
• Social media, culture and change/social innovation
• Participatory media and intersectionality
• Participatory media and digital disability
• Social media, disruptive innovation, and capacity-building for all
• Augmented reality, social media and accessibility
• Online activism and minoritized groups
• Implicit exclusion and social media
• Identity formation and digital fandom
• Social media, storytelling, and inclusive innovation
• Digital paths to inclusion
• Marginalized citizens and social media

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Nanette Levinson (Primary Contact)
American University
nlevins@american.edu

Derrick Cogburn
American University
dcogburn@american.edu‬‬

Filippo Trevisan
American University
trevisan@american.edu

Online Social Communities and Networks (OSN) have become a source of data and reference for not only those seeking advice but also those engaged in social persuasion. With accelerated speed, more and more entities (human and AI) are tapping into the ‘wisdom of crowds’ as a source of information that influences our decisions and lives. Social media and networks have revolutionized the manner in which individuals obtain the information they need to make decisions.

Using OSN can accelerate or decelerate the DM process for individuals, organizations and communities by accessing data from multiple sources. While ample independent research exists on OSN and DM, there is a lack of research into how online technology affects the making of decisions. How do we use OSN in our everyday decision making? What are the bright and dark aspects of decision making in OSN? And how do the bias and misinformation in these networks influence our thinking, views, and ultimately, decisions? The synergy of these themes provides a unique research perspective from which to take a fresh look at both DM research and the process of DM as it is affected by the use of OSN.

The primary purpose of this minitrack is to explore and extend, as well as challenge, existing knowledge of OSN and DM. We hope to:

• Understand and ascertain whether OSN can support and empower users in their decision making process and particular phases
• Identify and conceptualize new phases (if any) in the decision making process that are integral to OSN conversations
• Explore the structure and sequence of decision making phases arising out of the use of OSN
• Identify biases, strengths and weaknesses of the human psyche that could be attenuated and/or enhanced through appropriate design of OSN for decision making
• Seek practical guidelines for the design of OSN that support blended decision making processes that leverage the wisdom of crowds

We welcome conceptual, theoretical, and empirical papers that enrich our understanding of this. All methodological approaches are welcome. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Decision Making in OSN
• The impact of OSN on Decision Making
• Types of OSN for Decision Making
• Decision Support in OSN
• The good, bad and ugly of decision making in OSN
• Bias, misinformation, and echo chambers in OSN
• OSN Data Analytics
• Typology of Users of OSN for Decision Making
• Traditional and New Decision Models and Theories in OSN
• Biases in OSN for Decision Making
• Group Decision Making
• Online vs Offline Decision Making
• Structure of Decisions in OSN
• Phases of Decision Making Processes in OSN
• Decision Making Governance, Risk, and Compliance in OSN
• OSN Security and Privacy
• OSN influence
• Decision Making Processes and Systems
• Apps, Tools and Technologies for Decision Making
• Health and Financial OSN Decision Making”

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Gabrielle Peko (Primary Contact)
University of Auckland
g.peko@auckland.ac.nz

Khushbu Tilvawala
University of Auckland
k.tilvawala@auckland.ac.nz

Ghazwan Hassna
Hawaiʻi Pacific University
ghassna@hpu.edu

Valeria Sadovykh
University of Auckland
valeriasadovykh@gmail.com

Digital and social media (DSM) have transformed the workplace in organizations. During the past two decades, electronic communication has changed organizational forms, enabled electronic document management, and preserved organizational storage. Combined with the growth of digital and social media technologies, organizations have been impacted in new ways. Social media includes blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and microblogging that provide new affordances to its users. While some prior studies have provided evidence to show the positive impacts of enterprise social media on employees, work processes, and performance, other studies have uncovered negative effects of DSM use on employee productivity and behaviors. For an organization to amplify the returns or benefits and mitigate the drawbacks of their DSM use, researchers and practitioners must deepen their understanding of the implications of DSM use for organizational purposes.

The global outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic at the beginning of 2020 has increased enterprise social media (ESM) use at home offices when companies sent employees to work from home. Now, three years after the pandemic, some employees have gradually returned to offices while others continue virtual work or adopt a hybrid work arrangement. The increasing use of ESM in home office environments or hybrid work arrangements has called for further research on the effects of ESM use on employee well-being, work-life balance, social media fatigue, and work performance post the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, AI technologies have been increasingly applied to manage and analyze DSM usage patterns, improve employee engagement, and optimize organizational processes. However, little is known about their impact on workplaces and organizational strategies.

This minitrack focuses on organizations’ internal and external use of digital and social media to facilitate work processes (e.g., communication, collaboration, and socialization) inclusive of both business (for-profit) and non-profit organizations and to engage various organizational stakeholders. AI plays a significant role in these processes, from automating content moderation and enhancing collaboration through intelligent virtual assistants to enabling personalized communication and support for hybrid work models. Hence, research of this minitrack lies at the intersection of multiple disciplines, namely Science & Technology, Organization Science, Marketing, and Behavioral Science.

The Call for Papers welcomes theoretical and empirical studies addressing organizational, managerial, technical, and behavioral perspectives on digital and social media by enterprises and their employees. Potential issues and topics include, but are not limited to:

• AI-powered enterprise social media analytics
• Digital and social media affordances
• Dark side of enterprise social media
• Digital and social media marketing
• Digital and social media use & employee work-life balance
• Digital and social media use & social capital
• Enterprise social media use and employee well-being
• Enterprise social media and digital transformation in organizations
• AI in digital transformation via DSM
• Ethical AI in enterprise social media
• Information security and enterprise social media
• Methodologies for studying digital and social media in enterprise
• Organizational strategies and practices associated with digital and social media use
• Social media marketing strategies for enterprises
• New theories to describe and explain the phenomenon of enterprise social media use
• Roles and responsibilities of IS departments in the use of and support for digital and social media
• The use of social media for employee advocacy, organizational fundraising, or donations
• The use of social media for public perception management
• Social media use and hybrid work post the COVID-19 pandemic
• The role of AI-generated social media content in organizational and marketing strategies”

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Wenqi Shen (Primary Contact)
Virginia Tech
shenw@vt.edu

Yen-Yao Wang
Auburn University
yenyao@auburn.edu

Ester Gonzalez
California State University, Fullerton
esgonzalez@fullerton.edu

This minitrack provides researchers with an opportunity to present work on the social aspects of digital games. The uniqueness of this minitrack is its focus on games and gaming, acknowledging that games can provide unusual and challenging analytical issues not found in other environments that may not have the same playful, perhaps semi-anonymous, focus on a game. Games research may call for multi-site, multi-method analysis not always found in other research areas and not only calls for deep understanding of theory and method but of games, gaming, and specific gaming environments. Given that G&G focuses on social elements, interactions, and structures, we envision digital games as socio-technical constructs. We are not focused on gamification or simulation of or for business processes, but may accept appropriate papers focused on simulations or the social aspects of gamification if they have a digital dimension to the work.

Submitted papers must contain a social dimension in the analysis or framing of digital games, examining, for example, sociability, social practices, communities (in-game, out-game, across multiple spaces or time), use of social affordances, or some other social dimension. With that in mind, and as part of the Digital and Social Media track, the Games and Gaming minitrack will cover the following topics:

1. Community management
2. Cooperative and competitive play
3. Fans and fan communities
4. Game curation via sites like Steam
5. Game design for sociality
6. Intercultural play
7. Multigenerational play
8. Multiplayer games
9. Network analysis of groups and communities in games
10. Player communities
11. Social affordances of games
12. Social issues in game development
13. Social practices (in-game, out-game, both)
14. Streaming gameplay (e.g., Twitch, YouTube Live, etc.)
15. Toxicity online

Accepted research will be considered for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports (JEGE).

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Nathaniel Poor (Primary Contact)
Underwood Institute
natpoor@gmail.com

Stephanie Orme
Key Lime Interactive
orme.stephanie@gmail.com

Andrew Phelps
American University
andymphelps@gmail.com

Information systems (IS) and marketing scholars have a long history in studying user-generated contents (UGC) and firm-generated contents (FGC) as important components of social media. Thanks to recent technological developments [e.g., generative AI algorithms and Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) used by OpenAI ], AI-generated content (AIGC) has become increasingly sophisticated and indistinguishable from human-generated content in some cases. AIGC refers to “content produced by an AI system that is capable of interpreting external data currently, to learn from such data, and to use that learning to achieve specific tasks through flexible adaptation ”AIGC can synthesize text, visual, audio and video data in a highly realistic manner. Business applications of AIGC range from creating virtual influencers by cloning of human personas and voices to producing advertising material on social media.”

Utilizing AIGC on social media has a wide range of benefits. In industries that require real-time reporting and response as well as direct communication with their target audiences, generative AI enables businesses to create human-like content without the need for intensive human labor. The media industry, for instance, utilizes generative AI to create news and engage in journalistic activities. Journalists who take advantage of generative AI algorithm possess the capability to personalize, recommend, fact-check, label, and translate a wide range of user-generated and viral content without the laborious efforts of humans. For corporate brands and social media influencers, generative AI can serve as an ideation mechanism for creating text, images, and videos for marketing campaigns or social media posts based on the discovery of UGC trends and topics that resonate with their audiences. In customer service, generative AI can help managers respond to customer complaints in a timely manner by generating appropriate compensation or resolution strategies based on the nature and severity of the complaint.

Despite the promise of generative AI on social media, there are some dark sides to be recognized. First, although AIGC has the potential to create highly engaging and personalized content for consumers, it may be perceived as inauthentic or lacking emotional resonance, which could negatively impact the reputation and engagement of a brand. In addition, AIGC may raise ethical concerns about deepfakes and generative adversarial networks (GANs) used to create fake news or customer reviews and perpetuate bias and discrimination, spread misinformation and propaganda, and sway opinions with political and economic agendas, which could have unintended consequences for individuals and organizations. Second, unfettered AI might erode labor market institutions that benefit workers, lessen democracy, and lead to poorer working conditions. Generative AI may profoundly and radically transform social media industry by redefining job duties and responsibilities (e.g., social media managers) or removing many of the administrative or even creative tasks typically handled by humans. For example, the voice actors are warning against the use of generative AI that creates replicas of their voices and are being asked to signal contracts that give away their rights to be used for AI without compensation.

To tackle the ethical dilemmas and concerns of AIGC on social media, it is crucial that IS and computer science, and digital marketing scholars develop a deeper understanding of how human agent behavior, AI capabilities, and social norms interact, and critically evaluate how AIGC might impact diverse stakeholders. This requires a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates perspectives from computer science, sociology, psychology, and philosophy to address this emerging issue. This minitrack welcomes papers in all formats including empirical studies, design, theory, theoretical framework, and case studies. In addition to the perspectives above, this minitrack welcomes any studies that investigate AIGC on social media from both technical perspectives and social behavioral perspectives.

1. User aspect of AIGC
   • Impact of AIGC on user engagement and social media metrics
   • User attitudes and perceptions towards AIGC on social media
   • The role of AIGC in shaping word-of-mouth on social media
   • Creation of AI-generated advertising material for customer awareness and persuasion
   • The use of AIGC in dealing with customer complaints or service failure
   • Personalization of AIGC to prevent customer negative reactions on social media
   • The use of AIGC for social movements on social media
   • The perception of AI-generated textual, visual, and audio customer-facing contents
   • Immersive experience and novel scenarios for the use of AIGC on social media
2. Technical aspect of AIGC
   • The leverage of large language model and generative transformer architecture in AIGC
   • Real-time voice and face expression cloning algorithms for AIGC
   • The impact of prompting design on the potential for bias in AIGC on social media
   • Evaluating the accuracy and relevance of AIGC as a function of prompting design
   • Developing guidelines for prompting design in generative AI models used for social media content generation.
   • Data quality and quantity on the performance of AI models used for generating social media content
   • Comparing the performance of different generative AI models and techniques for generating social media content
   • Techniques for detecting and mitigating bias in AI-generated social media content
3. Ethical aspect of AIGC
   • Ethical guidelines and best practices for the use of AIGC on social media
   • Government regulations and company policies related to AIGC on social media
   • Trustworthiness, accountability, and transparency of AIGC on social media
   • Evaluating the impact of AIGC on privacy and data protection
   • Mitigation of social inequalities and injustices of AIGC on social media
   • Diversity, equity, and inclusion of AIGC on social media
   • Responsible governance of AI avatar and its created contents
   • Exploring effective coordination mechanisms between human and AI agents in creating social media contents
   • Exploring dark sides of AIGC and finding resolution strategies”

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Yichuan Wang (Primary Contact)
University of Sheffield
yichuan.wang@sheffield.ac.uk

Yiran Su
University of Massachusetts Amherst
yiransu@isenberg.umass.edu

Netnography can reveal cultural insights about many of the facets of people’s social, work, and everyday lives shared online, or technocultural insights that deeply implicate their use of devices or existence within technological assemblages. Founded on practices of immersive journal note-taking across digital spheres, structured and ethical search for small amounts of deep data, and the established principles of researcher-as-instrument, netnography reliably delivers cultural insight to researchers working in industry, government, and academia. Rooted in the rigorous qualitative cocktail of methods called ethnography, netnography provides specific and adaptive procedures for every element of the qualitative digital research process, including data collection, reflective engagement, and ethics. With thousands of peer-reviewed published netnographies in print, netnography is recognized as a method of generating scientific understanding across numerous academic fields.

Currently, many systems sciences researchers may not be aware of recent developments in netnography, such as its focus on “more-than-human” analyses of affordances and algorithms and the application of generative AI techniques to support netnographers throughout the various steps of a netnographic research process. Crowdsourcing research innovation and constantly evolving, netnography is expanding into immersive videogame and Metaverse-style contexts, AI-assisted deep data prompts, auto-ethnographic auto-netnography, and transformative action research.

The purpose of this minitrack is to encourage and spotlight netnographic research work across the system sciences. We seek to elicit and attract research contributions that develop, conceptualize, use, and adapt netnography. Applications of netnography may occur in studies that use it as a stand-alone method or that feature it in coordination with other techniques. Netnography can be utilized to examine a variety of socio-technical, organizational, technical, marketing, managerial, cultural, and social topics and issues. We welcome conceptual, empirical, and insight-generating contributions using, adapting, or critiquing netnography for this mini-track. Some potential topics and approaches to spur further ideas include:

• AI-assisted netnography
• Auto-netnographies of system sciences contexts
• Conceptual or philosophical development of netnography
• Corporate or organizational netnography contexts
• Data privacy and netnography
• Digital ethnography
• Ethics, consent, vulnerability, and netnography
• Immersion Journal innovations or examples
• Longitudinal netnography (long time spans)
• Metaverse, immersive technology, gaming, and e-sports netnographies
• Mobile ethnography
• Netnographies and specific theories (e.g., affordances, assemblages, institutional theory, algorithmic culture, etc.)
• Qualitative data analysis methods and netnography (e.g., grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative analysis, thematic analysis)
• Social media netnography on less researched platforms
• Transformative netnographies and social media activism

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Robert Kozinets (Primary Contact)
University of Southern California
rkozinets@usc.edu

Ulrike Gretzel
University of Southern California
ugretzel@gmail.com

Tung Bui
University of Hawaii at Manoa
tungb@hawaii.edu

In an era marked by frequent and diverse crises—from natural disasters and public health emergencies to political and social upheavals—social media has evolved from a basic communication tool into a vital resource for building resilient digital communities. The rapid spread of accurate information during a crisis not only galvanises community action but also supports efficient emergency response. For example, during the recent Los Angeles wildfires, residents quickly turned to platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok etc. to share real-time updates on fire progress, evacuation routes and safe zones. Grassroots networks emerged to coordinate shelter efforts and distribute essential supplies, while local authorities used verified accounts to issue alerts and counter misinformation, thereby maintaining public trust during uncertainty.

This minitrack, Resilient Digital Communities: Social Media, Crisis Response, and Collective Action, aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum where scholars, practitioners and policymakers can examine and discuss the multifaceted roles of social media in crisis management. By exploring issues such as digital crisis communication, collective action, misinformation management, and the ethical challenges of digital surveillance, this minitrack seeks to generate actionable insights that contribute to both immediate crisis response and a sustainable community recovery. Areas and Topics of interests include:

1. Digital crisis communication:
   • Utilisation of social media for real-time crisis alerts and emergency management.
   • Strategies for integrating social media with traditional crisis communication channels.
2. Community mobilisation and collective action:
   • Case studies on grassroots movements and public advocacy during emergencies.
   • Mechanisms of digital mobilisation that enhance community response.
3. Misinformation, disinformation and trust:
   • Challenges of combatting misinformation during crises.
   • Methods to maintain public trust through accurate and timely communication
   • Manipulation of communities in political crisis through social media
4. Digital inclusion and accessibility in crisis response:
   • Ensuring equitable access to digital platforms for marginalised communities.
   • Strategies for inclusive design and management of social media during emergencies.
5. Psychological resilience and digital wellbeing:
   • The role of online peer support and digital empathy in mitigating crisis-induced stress.
   • Approaches to harness social media for enhancing community mental health.
6. Ethical considerations in digital crisis management:
   • Balancing data privacy and public good during emergency responses.
   • Evaluating the ethical implications of digital surveillance and data usage.
7. Innovative technological solutions for crisis response:
   • The application of artificial intelligence, blockchain and other emerging technologies to improve crisis management via social media.
   • Development of integrated systems for early warning, resource distribution, and post-crisis recovery
8. Sustainable strategies in social media
   • The mitigation of digital carbon footprints for building sustainable social media strategies in organisations
   • The role of social media in promoting sustainable consumer behavior

Minitrack Co-chairs:

Zeeshan Bhatti (Primary Contact)
University of Portsmouth
zeeshan.bhatti@port.ac.uk

Tahir Abbas Syed
University of Manchester
tahirabbas.syed@manchester.ac.uk

Hina Mahboob Yasin
University of Portsmouth
hina.yasin@port.ac.uk

Sarah Clifft
Catholic University of Lyon
sclifft@univ-catholyon.fr

In the digital age, social media influencers have emerged as powerful players in shaping public opinion and driving consumer behavior. They engage millions of followers through platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, promoting products, services, and lifestyles. This call for papers invites research exploring the impact and influence of social media influencers across various societal dimensions. In addition to traditional human influencers, this call also seeks studies on the rise of virtual influencers—digital avatars created to engage audiences and endorse products and brands.

The landscape of influencer marketing is rapidly evolving with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and blockchain-based social commerce. AI-driven influencers and algorithmic content curation are reshaping engagement dynamics, while concerns around influencer-driven misinformation, deepfake-generated endorsements, and ethical sustainability continue to grow. Technological advancements present both challenges and opportunities in influencer marketing, making this minitrack a timely venue for cutting-edge research.
From questions of ethics and accountability in influencer marketing to the role of influencers in shaping cultural norms and values, there is a growing need to understand the broader implications of this phenomenon. The influence of social media influencers can be both positive and negative, and it is important to examine both the benefits and the potential drawbacks of influencer marketing. Virtual influencers, in particular, introduce unique challenges, including the blurring of reality and digital fabrication, as well as the ethical considerations surrounding the use of AI-generated personas. As influencer marketing continues to expand, it is crucial to assess its impact on consumers, businesses, and society as a whole. We encourage submissions that bring together interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative research methods to advance our understanding on this dynamic and evolving field.

Topics of Interest includes:

• The role of social media influencers in marketing and advertising
• The impact of social media influencers on consumer behavior
• Ethics, transparency, and accountability in influencer marketing
• The relationship between social media influencers and traditional media
• The influence of influencers on politics, public opinion, and social movements
• Virtual influencers: their impact on consumer behavior and the advertising industry
• Ethics concerns surrounding virtual influencers and AI-generated personas
• The dark side of influencer culture
• Well-being of influencers and followers
• Compensatory consumption and social media influencers
• AI-driven influencers, algorithmic content curation, and engagement manipulation
• Influencer marketing and generative AI content
• Influencer-driven misinformation, disinformation, and its societal impact
• Influencers and sustainability marketing: ethical consumption vs. greenwashing

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Samira Farivar (Primary Contact)
Carleton University
samira.farivar@carleton.ca

Fang Wang
Wilfrid Laurier University
fwang@wlu.ca