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Social Networking and Communities Minitrack at HICSS

Welcome to the official page of the minitrack of social networking and communities at HICSS

In this page you can find all the papers from past years and also the Call for Papers of the current year.

About:

This minitrack has been part of HICSS since 2003, and over the years has gained a lot of visibility and esteem from the academic and professional community. At HICSS 45 in January, 2011, this minitrack was the biggest one of the conference, spanning a day and a half (6 total sessions), with a full audience throughout. The minitrack focuses on social networks and their interrelations with communities, both online and offline, in the context work, learning, social and/or personal life, and will be of interest to researchers in fields such as information science, management, sociology, communications and more.

This minitrack attracts papers that address issues of online communities of practice, inquiry and interest created in the interest of political, educational, business, social and/or gaming pursuits, and with attention to how online community building and management contribute to success in the digital economy and society. At present, there is tremendous research interest in these topics, driven by the fact that these sociological phenomena are changing the way people work, play and socialize, and how they spend their time and money. Accordingly, billions of dollars are being spent by businesses and consumers on these technologies, and the rate of adoption has been phenomenal, while empirical and theoretical work on social and technical design, and economic and social outcomes lag behind. We call for empirical and theoretical papers that add to our understanding of the social, political, and economic landscape of communities and social networks at work, school, home, play and in society.

Each mini-track is invited to nominate a Best Paper that then becomes an entry for a Best Paper in Track competition. Each of these Best Papers is also judged again at the HICSS level for best overall papers.

In both 2009 and 2010 the paper nominated for this mini-track went on to received the award of Best Paper in the Internet and Digital Economy Track. This is a great achievement which shows the maturity of scholarship and in-depth discussions conducted in this mini-track. We look forward to seeing one of our mini-track papers making it to Best Paper at HICSS someday soon.

Papers from Past Years

HICSS-44 (2011)

Mini-Track Chairs: Caroline Haythornthwaite and Karine Nahon

HICSS-43 (2010)

Mini-Track Chairs: Karine Barzilai-Nahon, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Ian MacInnes and Paul Benjamin Lowry

HICSS-42 (2009)

Mini-Track Chairs: Caroline Haythornthwaite, Karine Barzilai-Nahon, Ian MacInnes and Paul Benjamin Lowry

HICSS-41 (2008)

Mini-Track Chairs: Karine Barzilai-Nahon and Caroline Haythornthwaite

HICSS-40 (2007)

Mini-Track Chair: Karine Barzilai-Nahon

HICSS-39 (2006)

Mini-Track Chair: Karine Barzilai-Nahon, Mark Ginsburg and Blair Nonnecke

 

This minitrack focuses primarily on social networks and their interrelations with communities, both online and offline, in the context work, learning, social and/or personal life. We would like to attract papers that address issues of online communities of practice, inquiry and interest created in the interest of political, educational, business, social and/or gaming pursuits, and with attention to how online community building and management contribute to success in the digital economy and society. At present, there is tremendous research interest in these topics, driven by the fact that these sociological phenomena are changing the way people work, play and socialize, and how they spend their time and money. Accordingly, billions of dollars are being spent by businesses and consumers on these technologies, and the rate of adoption has been phenomenal, while empirical and theoretical work on social and technical design, and economic and social outcomes lag behind.

We call for empirical and theoretical papers that add to our understanding of the social, political, and economic landscape of communities and social networks at work, school, home, play and in society. Examples of the possible interdisciplinary topics of interest in these contexts include, but are not limited to the following:

• Social, political and/or economic impact of social media

• Communities as sociological phenomenon in the digital economy

• Community development and community informatics

• Design, development, and user studies of social media

• Online communities of practice, inquiry or interest

• Business models of Second Life

• E-learning: structures, implementations, and practices

• Serious leisure communities online

• Organizational behavior of communities

• Social network studies and analyses of online communities

• Mobile applications, services and use for and by online communities

• Case studies and topologies of online communities

• Case studies and analyses of the rise and fall of social network sites and online communities

• Theoretical models of virtual worlds

• Advertising in online communities and social networks

• Models for managing behavior in online communities

• Behavior in online gaming communities

• Models and cases of synergies and/or conflicts between real and virtual worlds

• Diffusion and adoption of social networking applications and practices

• Development of social networking applications and practices

• Critical perspectives on social media and local and/or virtual community

• Disruptive strategies of virtual worlds

• Anti-social behavior in online social networks and communities

• Legal and ethical issues in social networking and virtual worlds

• Privacy and security issues

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