This minitrack focuses on two themes: a) research that critically interrogates how and when digital and social media reify existing power structures or realign
power for underrepresented or marginalized groups, and b) research that addresses ethical issues associated with doing research on digital and social media. The minitrack seeks both conceptual and empirical approaches to these two themes. Conceptual papers
should address foundational scholarship and theories —e.g., important interventions for thinking about information exchange in communities and societies, key ideas, paradigms, and methods. Empirical papers should draw on original studies of digital and social
media that illustrate the critical or ethical dimensions of digital infrastructures, social media platforms, or data use.
Potential paper topics could explore the following topics and themes:
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studies of the perpetuation of gender, race, ethno-nationalist, and faith-based hostility and bullying found in a range of online environments;
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studies of the values and worldviews embedded within specific hardware and software technologies;
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studies that look at the political economies and labor conditions of digital content creation, digital work, and the consequences of sharing economy platforms;
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studies that look at mediated representations and practices of political community;
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studies that examine digital power relations between individuals, collectives, and societal institutions.
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case studies that grapple with the challenges and opportunities of unequal data access among digital and social media researchers (e.g., APIs, open vs. proprietary data);
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studies that explore the situated ethics of social media research in different digital contexts
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studies of the environmental impact that digital and social media researchers have on the planet by using and reusing data and metadata stored in resource-intensive ways;
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studies of academic collaborations with actors that are a focus of controversies (e.g., military units, immigration enforcement officials, lobbying groups);
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studies that mobilize non-traditional or experimental research methods developed for the specificities of digital and social media.
Minitrack Co-chairs:
Amelia Acker (Primary
Contact)
University of Texas at Austin
aacker@ischool.utexas.edu
Andrew Iliadis
Temple University
andrew.iliadis@temple.edu
Nicholas Proferes
Arizona State University
nicholas.proferes@asu.edu