Digital and Social Media Track

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?
• In what ways do online information environments interact with offline political, social, and economic conditions to produce systemic societal effects?
• What interdisciplinary research approaches are most effective for advancing theory and empirical understanding of evolving global information environments?
• What empirical indicators capture long-term societal effects of sustained exposure to changing information environments, beyond engagement metrics?
• How can technology solutions help track and 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

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

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

Kimberly Glasgow
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Kimberly.Glasgow@jhuapl.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. For this minitrack, 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
• 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

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

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

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

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

The digital and social media landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Generative artificial intelligence, algorithmic content curation, and platform transformations raise urgent questions about power, trust, privacy, and participation across digital media ecosystems. Simultaneously, persistent digital inequalities and new forms of technological exclusion demand critical scholarly attention—particularly regarding accessibility and inclusion for persons with disabilities, who often face compounding barriers in digital and social media environments. 

This minitrack provides a forum for analyzing how digital and social media platforms can foster—or hinder—pluralistic communities across diverse settings. We welcome multi-disciplinary and multi-method research centered on the intersection of digital and social media technologies, identity, and inclusion within varied cultural contexts. Core questions include:

• How do digital and social media shape identity formation and practices of inclusion or exclusion?
• How do cultural contexts mediate these processes?
• How can computational approaches and large-scale social media data analysis illuminate patterns that traditional methods might miss?
• How can in-depth qualitative and community-based methodologies help explain the motivations behind these trends?
• How can digital and social media platforms be designed, governed, and used to advance accessibility and meaningful participation for persons with disabilities?

This minitrack encourages research employing a range of methodological approaches, including but not limited to computational social science methods such as text analytics, natural language processing, network analysis, and machine learning applied to social media data; quantitative and qualitative approaches; mixed-methods designs; experimental research; longitudinal and comparative studies; and indigenous and community-based methodologies. We particularly welcome work that combines computational techniques with interpretive depth to address questions of meaning, power, and lived experience in digital and social media contexts. Topics of interest include:

• Accessibility, disability, and inclusive design in digital and social media platforms
• Assistive technologies, social media integration, and user experience
• Computational approaches to studying identity and inclusion in social media (text analytics, NLP, big data methods)
• Artificial intelligence, algorithmic systems, and digital divides
• Platform governance, content moderation, and inclusion
• Datafication, power, and inclusion/exclusion
• Digital and social media’s role in inclusion and exclusion in post-pandemic contexts
• Cross-cultural and intercultural dimensions of social media use
• Expressing and performing identities in social media ecosystems
• Diasporas, migration, and digital media
• Online harassment, hate speech, and platform responses
• Generative AI, synthetic media, and identity in social media contexts
• Digital media, collective action, and minoritized communities
• Gendered dimensions of digital and social media participation
• Aging, intergenerational dynamics, and social media 
• Augmented and virtual reality, immersive social media, and accessibility
• Digital storytelling, social media, and inclusive innovation
• Online learning environments, social media, and inclusion
• Disability advocacy and community-building through social media

Research examining multiple, intersecting inequalities—including those related to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, religion, disability, age, and socioeconomic status—is especially encouraged. We recognize that these dimensions often intersect and compound in digital and social media environments, and we are particularly interested in research that centers disability perspectives and accessibility concerns. 

Papers accepted to this minitrack are eligible for HICSS expedited review consideration at Data & Policy, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by Cambridge University Press that bridges data science and governance research.

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Derrick Cogburn (Primary Contact)
American University
dcogburn@american.edu‬‬

Nanette Levinson
American University
nlevins@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 decision-making process for individuals, organizations, and communities by enabling access to diverse data from multiple sources. Trust in decisions is often built through expert opinion, influencer endorsements, and user recommendations. Bias, misinformation, and echo chambers erode this trust and confidence in OSN-driven decision-making.

Although independent research exists on OSN and decision-making, there is a lack of research on how online technology (social media and AI) affects decision-making. How do we use OSN in our everyday decision-making? What are the bright and dark aspects of decision-making in OSN? And what is the impact of network bias, misinformation, and AI on decision-making using OSN?  

The primary purpose of this minitrack is to explore, extend, and challenge existing knowledge of OSN and decision-making. We hope to:

• Understand and ascertain whether OSN can support and empower users in their decision-making process, and in particular phases
• Understand how AI is augmenting and transforming the use of OSN for decision-making
• 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 from the use of OSN
• Identify biases, strengths, and weaknesses of the human psyche that could be attenuated and/or enhanced through the 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 (human and AI)

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

• Decision-making in OSN
• 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
• AI-augmented decision-making in OSN
• Human in the Loop (HITL) in OSN decision-making
• Cognitive biases in OSN for decision-making
• Group decision-making
• Structure of decisions in OSN
• Phases of decision-making processes in OSN
• Decision-making Governance, Risk, and Compliance in OSN
• Apps, tools and technologies to support decision-making in OSN

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

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

Ghazwan Hassna
Hawaii Pacific University
ghassna@hpu.edu

Valeria Sadovykh
University of Auckland
valeriasadovykh@gmail.com

David Sundaram
University of Auckland
d.sundaram@auckland.ac.nz

Digital and social media (DSM) have fundamentally transformed organizational work, communication, and value creation. Over the past two decades, electronic communication technologies have reshaped organizational forms, enabled digital document management, and expanded organizational memory and knowledge storage. The rapid growth of DSM platforms—often augmented by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for content curation, analytics, and interaction support—has further extended these transformations, introducing new modes of interaction, coordination, and organizing within and beyond organizational boundaries. Platforms such as blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and microblogging systems provide novel affordances that influence how users communicate, collaborate, innovate, and engage with organizational stakeholders.

Prior research documents both positive and negative consequences of DSM use in organizations. On the one hand, studies highlight benefits for employee engagement, knowledge sharing, coordination, entrepreneurship, and organizational performance. On the other hand, a growing body of work reveals the dark side of DSM use, including productivity loss, distraction, information overload, social media fatigue, surveillance and privacy concerns, reputational risks, and counterproductive or deviant behaviors. Understanding how organizations can amplify the benefits of DSM while mitigating its unintended consequences remains a central research challenge.

In addition, the increasing use of enterprise social media in hybrid and digitally mediated work environments raises important questions about employee well-being, work–life balance, collaboration, identity, and performance. At the same time, AI technologies are increasingly integrated into DSM platforms to support analytics, content moderation, communication, and decision-making. While these developments create new opportunities for organizations and entrepreneurs, they also introduce governance, ethical, and strategic concerns that warrant further investigation.

This minitrack focuses on the internal and external use of digital and social media in organizations, including both for-profit and non-profit contexts. We invite research examining how organizations, employees, and entrepreneurs use DSM to facilitate communication, collaboration, coordination, innovation, and new venture creation, as well as to engage customers, communities, and other stakeholders. We also encourage studies that critically examine the dark side of DSM use and the organizational strategies developed to manage associated risks. Research in this minitrack lies at the intersection of Information Systems, Science & Technology, Organization Science, Marketing, and Behavioral Science.

This minitrack welcome theoretical and empirical studies addressing organizational, managerial, technical, and behavioral perspectives on digital and social media use. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• AI-enabled analytics, content creation, curation, and moderation in digital and social media
• Ethical, responsible, and transparent use of AI in organizational and enterprise social media
• Risks and unintended consequences of AI-enabled social media (e.g., surveillance, bias, automation)
• Digital and social media affordances, constraints, and use patterns
• Enterprise social media, organizational digital transformation, and change
• Organizational strategies, governance, and IS roles in supporting DSM and AI
• Digital and social media marketing, branding, and personalization
• Employee well-being, work–life balance, and social capital in DSM use
• Digital entrepreneurship and innovation on social media platforms
• Information security, privacy, and risk management in organizational social media
• Methodological advances for studying digital and social media in organizations
• Social media for employee advocacy, fundraising, reputation, and crisis management
• Digital and social media use in hybrid and digitally mediated work environments

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

Games, gaming, and playful behavior have been an essential element in our history and culture. Games and gaming often have a social dimension, with digital media in particular moderating those activities in unique ways. As such, this minitrack is looking for work related to digital games and sociality. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods papers are welcome, ranging from interviews to big data analyses, or more broadly theoretical papers looking at digital gaming practices in general. Types of games studied may include massively multiplayer online games; PC, console, and mobile; free to play and “pay to play”; and games from small independent producers as well as large game studios. As part of the Digital and Social Media track, we expect papers to contain a social dimension, examining, for example, sociability, social practices, communities, use of social affordances, or some other social dimension.

We acknowledge 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 this minitrack focuses on social elements, interactions, and structures, we envision digital games as socio-technical constructs.

Overall, we are looking for gaming research primarily related to digital games and with a social dimension. With that in mind and as part of the Digital and Social Media track, the Games and Gaming minitrack will cover, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Community management
• Cooperative and competitive play
• Fans and fan communities
• Game curation via sites like Steam
• Game design for sociality
• Intercultural play
• Multigenerational play
• Multiplayer games
• Network analysis of groups and communities in games
• Player communities
• Social affordances of games
• Social issues in game development
• Social practices (in-game, out-game, both)
• Streaming gameplay (e.g., Twitch, YouTube Live, etc.)
• 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

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) has transformed it from a theoretical concept into a significant force reshaping the landscape of social media. This minitrack invites research that explores the intersection of generative AI and social media across user, technical, and ethical dimensions. We welcome studies on how AIGC impacts the creative process, operational efficiency, and consumer engagement, as well as investigations into its potential to redefine interaction through virtual influencers and personalized advertising. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The impact of AIGC on user engagement metrics and word-of-mouth dynamics
• Technical advancements in reasoning, image, and video generation for social platforms
• The role of prompt engineering in shaping the accuracy and fairness of AI-generated content
• Ethical challenges including the rise of deepfakes, misinformation, and concerns over authenticity and brand trust
• The integration of AI with human creativity to enhance creative workflows and strategic objectives
• Economic and labor market implications of adopting generative AI on content creation platforms

This minitrack provides a vital platform for multidisciplinary research that navigates the complex landscape of AI-driven content in the digital age.

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

This minitrack invites research examining emerging phenomena in social media that disrupt and redefine the global social media landscape. We are particularly interested in work that captures novel and underexplored shifts in how social media platforms function, how content is created and circulated, and how actors—creators, consumers, and firms—engage across platforms and markets.

We welcome research addressing both technological and behavioral disruptors. Technological disruptions include, for example, the growing role of artificial intelligence in content creation, recommendation, and moderation. Behavioral disruptions include evolving practices such as influencers challenging established norms of commercial influence, as well as consumers’ changing participation, expectations, and engagement behaviors. We are also interested in organizational responses to these shifts, including firms cultivating in-house or employee influencers and reconfiguring their social media strategies accordingly.

The minitrack emphasizes global and cross-platform perspectives, focusing on phenomena that span multiple social media platforms and are not confined to specific country contexts. An especially interesting angle would be to receive research from a developing market perspective as there is currently a lacuna of research taking emerging market perspectives. We welcome a wide range of methodological approaches, including experiments, interviews, content analyses, mixed-method designs, and conceptual or theory-building papers. Submissions should offer a clearly novel and disruptive angle by addressing social media phenomena that are visible in practice but remain insufficiently examined in extant research. Provocative and forward-looking contributions are encouraged.

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Valeria Penttinen (Primary Contact)
Northern Illinois University
vpenttinen@niu.edu

Magnus Hultman
Brock University
mhultman@brocku.ca

In the digital age, social media influence has become a central force shaping public opinion, cultural norms, and consumer behavior. Influencing is no longer driven solely by human influencers but increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence (AI) through content creation, recommendation, targeting, and amplification. This minitrack invites research that examines social media influencers and influencing as a socio-technical phenomenon involving complex interactions among human actors, AI systems, and digital platforms.

Recent advances in AI and generative technologies are transforming how influence is produced, evaluated, and experienced on social media. AI-generated and virtual influencers are gaining prominence, while algorithmic recommender systems and generative tools shape visibility, engagement, and persuasion at scale. These developments raise foundational questions about human–AI interaction, agency, authenticity, trust, disclosure, transparency, and accountability in digital influence.

Alongside new opportunities, AI-mediated influencing introduces societal and ethical challenges. These include the dark side of influencer culture, such as problematic parasocial relationships, manipulation and engagement engineering, misinformation and disinformation, deepfake endorsements, mental-health implications for influencers and audiences. Sustainability-related concerns, including ethical consumption narrative and greenwashing, also merit renewed attention as AI systems accelerate the creation and spread of persuasive content. Understanding both benefits and risks is essential for theory development, managerial practice, and public policy.

This minitrack encourages interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse research that advances understanding of social media influencers and influencing in the context of AI-enabled systems and emerging challenges. Submissions may draw on perspectives from information systems, marketing, communication, psychology, data science, and related fields. Topics of Interest include, but are not limited to:

• Social media influencers and influence processes in marketing and advertising
• Consumer responses to influencer content and AI-mediated influence
• Ethics, disclosure, transparency, and accountability in influencer marketing and AI-mediated influence
• Relationships among influencers, platforms, and traditional media ecosystems
• Influencers’ roles in politics, public opinion, and social movements
• Virtual influencers and AI-generated personas: effects on consumers and the advertising industry
• Trust, authenticity, and identity in AI-generated and hybrid (human–AI) influencing
• Algorithmic curation, engagement manipulation, and attention/visibility dynamics
• Generative AI–enabled content creation in influencer practice and brand partnerships
• Misinformation/disinformation via influencers, synthetic media, and algorithmic amplification
• The dark side of influencer culture: parasociality, dependency, harassment, exploitation, and fraud
• Well-being and mental health implications for influencers and audiences
• Compensatory consumption and problematic engagement in social media influencing
• Influencers, AI, and sustainability marketing: ethical consumption, ESG narratives, and greenwashing

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

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

Fang Wang
Wilfrid Laurier University
fwang@wlu.ca

Social media platforms structure large parts of everyday consumption, particularly for adolescents and young consumers. For many young people, social media are primary environments in which products are discovered, preferences are formed, and consumption-related practices take place within ongoing social interaction. Unlike traditional marketplace settings, digital consumption on social media occurs in highly visible, socially networked, and algorithmically curated environments in which commercial content, peer feedback, and identity-related expression intersect.

In these contexts, consumption is not limited to discrete purchase events but becomes part of continuous processes of social comparison, experimentation, and identity-related positioning. For adolescents and young consumers, social media function as central arenas of consumer socialization. Commercial persuasion, peer influence, and platform design meet developing cognitive, emotional, and self-regulatory capacities. Differences in experience, resources, and consumer competence affect how young users interpret persuasive cues, respond to social visibility, and deal with commercial influence.

At the same time, the structural conditions under which young people access and use social media are increasingly subject to public debate. Discussions about age-based participation rules, minimum access thresholds, and platform accountability are taking place across different societal and regulatory contexts, with some measures proposed, tested, or revised. Even where formal restrictions are not implemented, shifting expectations regarding appropriate age of entry and oversight may alter when and under what conditions future cohorts first engage with digital platforms. Such evolving access regimes raise questions about how digital consumption practices are learned when entry into social media is delayed, structured, or more explicitly framed.

Platform architectures that encourage prolonged engagement, such as continuous content streams and algorithmically personalized feeds, also influence the temporal and attentional conditions under which young consumers encounter commercial content. Examining how adolescents experience and respond to these structural and design conditions contributes to a more precise understanding of how consumer competence develops and how vulnerability can arise or be reduced across different stages of adolescence.

This minitrack adopts a youth- and consumer-centered perspective that differs from work primarily focused on platform technologies, influencer strategies, misinformation processes, or system-level decision support. Rather than treating social media solely as communication channels or information systems, it conceptualizes them as digital consumption environments in which consumer development, market participation, and autonomy take place over time. Particular attention is given to adolescents and young consumers as a population for whom digital market participation is formative and consequential.

The minitrack also welcomes research addressing ethical questions at the intersection of youth, vulnerability, and commercial influence. This includes work on transparency of advertising practices, unequal exposure to persuasive content, algorithmic amplification of commercial messages, and the responsibilities of platforms and market actors in youth-oriented digital consumption contexts. Ethical inquiry is understood as integral to the analysis of youth market participation rather than as a separate “dark side” domain.

Contributions may draw on behavioral, developmental, psychological, communication, marketing, retailing, and information systems perspectives. Empirical, conceptual, and methodological work is welcome, including experimental, longitudinal, qualitative, and design-oriented approaches.

By foregrounding youth and consumer vulnerability in digital consumption environments, this minitrack aims to advance a differentiated understanding of consumer socialization, competence development, and autonomy across the life course within the Digital and Social Media track.

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Hanna Schramm-Klein (Primary Contact)
University of Siegen
hsk@uni-siegen.de

Gunnar Mau
Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences
Gunnar.Mau@h2.de

Sascha Steinmann
Aarhus University
sst@mgmt.au.dk

Artificial intelligence and digital platforms are fundamentally transforming sport ecosystems. From algorithmic content personalization to generative AI-powered fan experiences, from athlete-as-media-entity dynamics to immersive engagement technologies, sport has emerged as a frontier domain for AI and platform innovation. As these technologies reshape how fans engage, how athletes build their brands, and how organizations create value, they also introduce important questions about transparency, ethics, and the symbiosis between human expertise and algorithmic intelligence.

This minitrack invites research that explores the intersection of AI, digital platforms, and ecosystem transformation in sport. We seek contributions that uncover new insights into contemporary sport phenomena, inform both scholarly understanding and managerial practice, and create value for stakeholders, communities, and society at large. We encourage studies employing diverse methodological approaches to meaningfully model underlying mechanisms, test causal pathways, and uncover emergent patterns that enrich our understanding of digital sport ecosystems. We welcome diverse methodological approaches, including computational methods, empirical studies, design science, and critical analyses, that address questions such as:

• AI Systems, Generative Technologies, and Multimodal Content Creation
  1. How do generative AI systems (e.g., large language models, image and video generation, multimodal foundation models) create new possibilities for content creation, fan communication, and personalized experiences in sport?
  2. What roles do AI agents, chatbots, and intelligent assistants play in mediating fan-organization interactions, and how do emerging platforms enable locally-deployed yet individually-tailored AI services?
  3. How are sport organizations leveraging AI for automated highlight generation, real-time content synthesis, and multimodal storytelling across text, image, audio, and video?
• Platforms and Ecosystem Dynamics
  1. How do digital platforms reshape relationships among fans, athletes, teams, brands, and media?
  2. What are the implications of athletes becoming autonomous media entities and brand strategists?
  3. How do platform-mediated ecosystems enable or constrain value creation across sport stakeholders?
• Fan Engagement, Consumer Experience, and Personalized AI Services
  1. How do algorithmic personalization and recommendation systems shape fan engagement, content consumption, and loyalty?
  2. What are the dynamics of gamification, betting and wagering platforms, interactive technologies, and immersive experiences in sport consumption?
  3. How do AI-enabled experiences transform the relationship between fans and sport across digital and physical contexts?
• Multimodal Data and Computational Innovation
  1. How can multimodal data sources (text, images, video, audio, sensor data, networks) be integrated to capture the complexity of contemporary sport phenomena?
  2. What methodological innovations advance our ability to analyze unstructured and dynamic sport data?
  3. What role do large-scale datasets and open science practices play in advancing reproducible research in digital sport ecosystems?
• Ethics, Governance, and Societal Implications
  1. What ethical challenges arise from AI-driven personalization, data monetization, and algorithmic decision-making in sport?
  2. How should sport organizations govern AI systems to protect consumer autonomy and promote responsible innovation?
  3. What are the societal implications of AI adoption across sport ecosystems, including issues of equity, access, and inclusion?

We encourage submissions from sport management, information systems, computer science, marketing, communication, and related fields. Both empirical and conceptual contributions are welcome. Example topics include, but are not limited to:

• AI Systems, Generative Technologies, and Multimodal Content Creation
  1. Generative AI adoption and implementation strategies in sport media organizations
  2. Fan perception and engagement with AI-generated sport content 
  3. Comparative effectiveness of human versus AI-created highlights and recaps
• Platforms and Ecosystem Dynamics
  1. Athlete brand building and audience development across social media platforms
  2. Platform migration patterns and multi-homing behavior among sport fans
  3. Revenue sharing models and creator compensation in sport content ecosystems
• Fan Engagement, Consumer Experience, and Personalized AI Services
  1. Effects of algorithmic recommendations on fan content consumption and loyalty formation
  2. User adoption and trust in AI-powered sport assistants and chatbots
  3. Gamification and wagering mechanics (e.g., responsible gambling design and consumer protection strategies) in fantasy sports, betting platforms, and prediction markets
• Multimodal Data and Computational Innovation
  1. Novel computational methods for social media analytics and sponsorship valuation 
  2. Sensor fusion approaches combining biometric, geospatial, and behavioral data
  3. Benchmark datasets and evaluation frameworks for sport AI applications
• Ethics, Governance, and Societal Implications
  1. Auditing algorithmic bias and fairness in sport recommendation and decision systems
  2. Fan data rights, consent mechanisms, and privacy-preserving personalization 
  3. Digital equity and inclusion in AI-mediated sport access and participation

Selected papers will be invited for consideration in a special issue of Sport Marketing Quarterly – Leading journal in sport marketing research, subject to editorial review and journal standards. This partnership provides authors with a streamlined pathway from conference presentation to peer-reviewed publication in a top-tier sport marketing outlet.

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Yizhou Qian (Primary Contact)
Louisiana State University
yqian@lsu.edu

Kevin Byon
Southern Methodist University
kbyon@mail.smu.edu

Bradley Baker
Temple University
bradley.baker@temple.edu

James Du
Florida State University
jdu3@fsu.edu

Digital and social platforms enable connection, creativity, and commerce, but they also generate significant harms for individuals, organizations, and society. These harms include problematic and addictive use, misinformation and synthetic content, privacy erosion and surveillance, harassment and toxicity, manipulation by bots and coordinated actors, discrimination and exclusion, and downstream impacts on mental health, civic discourse, and institutional trust. The growing use of generative AI and automation further amplifies these risks by lowering the cost of persuasive content, impersonation, and large-scale coordination.

This minitrack invites research on the dark side of social media and digital platforms, broadly defined as unintended, harmful, or exploitative outcomes associated with platform design, governance, and use. We welcome empirical, theoretical, design-science, and methodological work that explains what harms occur, why they occur, for whom they occur, and how they can be mitigated. Submissions may use qualitative, quantitative, computational, experimental, or mixed methods, and may focus on individuals, groups, organizations, markets, or societal institutions. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Individual and psychological harms
  1. Problematic use, addiction-like behaviors, compulsive engagement, and attention capture
  2. Mental health impacts (e.g., anxiety, depression, loneliness, body image, self-harm exposure)
  3. Social comparison, validation-seeking dynamics, and parasocial relationships
  4. Youth/child safety, developmental impacts, and family/school contexts
  5. Digital well-being interventions and measurement (screen time, nudges, friction, design choices)
• Privacy, surveillance, and data harms
  1. Lack of privacy, tracking, profiling, and targeted advertising harms
  2. Data brokerage, consent breakdowns, dark patterns, and deceptive UX
  3. Location/privacy leakage, doxxing, and identity risks
  4. Differential privacy risks and harms to vulnerable populations
  5. Governance, transparency, and accountability for data practices
• Manipulation, deception, and information integrity
  1. Misinformation/disinformation, propaganda, and influence operations
  2. Synthetic media (deepfakes), impersonation, and AI-generated content at scale
  3. Spam, scams, fraud, and social engineering on platforms
  4. Algorithmic amplification and virality dynamics contributing to harm
  5. Detection, mitigation, labeling, and user resilience/inoculation strategies
• Bots, coordination, and adversarial behavior
  1. Bots, cyborg accounts, coordinated inauthentic behavior, and astroturfing
  2. Coordinated harassment and brigading; networked abuse
  3. Platform gaming (engagement manipulation, follower/like markets)
  4. Cross-platform campaigns and migration of harmful content/actors
  5. Adversarial adaptation and the arms race between attackers and defenders
• Social harms: polarization, extremism, and erosion of trust
  1. Polarization, echo chambers, radicalization pathways, and community fragmentation
  2. Extremist content ecosystems and recruitment dynamics
  3. Erosion of trust in institutions, journalism, science, and elections
  4. Collective harms: panic, stigma, scapegoating, and intergroup conflict
  5. Harms to democratic discourse and civic participation
• Harassment, discrimination, and inequality
  1. Toxicity, hate speech, harassment, and online violence
  2. Gendered/racialized harassment and intersectional impacts
  3. Discrimination in visibility, moderation, and platform governance
  4. Exclusion, accessibility harms, and unequal protection across user groups
  5. Safety tooling and moderation governance: effectiveness and unintended consequences
• Platform governance, policy, and interventions
  1. Content moderation strategies, human–AI moderation, and due process
  2. Incentives, business models, and design choices that produce harms
  3. Regulation, policy compliance, and global governance differences
  4. Auditing, transparency reporting, and accountability mechanisms
  5. Design-science interventions and evaluations (what works, what backfires)

Minitrack Chair:

Kevin Mentzer (Primary Contact)
Nichols College
kevin.mentzer@nichols.edu

Nada Hashmi
Babson College
nhashmi@babson.edu

Anjali Bal
Babson College
abal@babson.edu