Social Platform Accountability in Global Perspectives:
Responsibility, Manipulation, and Control in Digital Social Spaces
Editor:
K. Hazel Kwon (Arizona State University), khkwon@asu.edu
W. Wayne Xu (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), weiaixu@umass.edu
Barry Wellman (NetLab Network), wellman@chass.utoronto.ca
Description:
The American Behavioral Scientist (ABS, Impact Factor: 1.79, https://journals.sagepub.com/home/abs) invites submissions for a special issue on “Social Platform Accountability in Global Perspectives: Responsibility, Manipulation, and Control in Digital Social Spaces.”
Democratic potentials of social technologies have been under threat in recent years, along with an expanding spread of manipulative and extreme digital activities. Examples of such activities vary from self-motivated sharing of radicalized content to coordinated propagation of disinformation. Many countries have been struggling with the rise of these activities within their own sociopolitical contexts, attesting to the globally shared awareness of the lack of accountability and transparency in the current digital environment.
This special issue calls for conceptual and empirical understanding of social platform accountability in global perspectives. This issue broadly defines a social platform as digital social space where online users interact with content and share their opinions or their own content with other users. Examples of social platforms may include mainstream social network sites, discussion forums like Reddit, online comment sections in news sites, anonymous communities like 8chan, and sites hosted in dark web. Conceptualizing social platform accountability requires understanding the roles of various stakeholders (e.g., users, tech industry, activists, government, policy makers, etc.) as well as multifaceted related issues (e.g., user responsibility, content moderation mechanisms, political economic motivations underlying digital manipulation, ethical tensions between responsible control and censorship, etc.). Furthermore, sociopolitical contexts where a society is situated may complicate the process of rationalizing and normalizing discourses surrounding social platform accountability within the society.
Submission Topics:
This special issue invites scholarship that examines causes and conditions that compromise –or strengthen –the accountability of social platforms. The special issue also seeks submissions from global scholars whose work may promote comparative understanding of the topic. It welcomes various methodological approaches (qualitative, quantitative, computational, etc.) and theoretical perspectives (empirical, legal/ethical, historical, etc.).
Possible topics, but not limited to, may include:
1) a case study of media manipulation or extreme content sharing, which addresses causes and conditions that deteriorate the accountability of social platforms;
2) an international case study focusing on the national context that influences the politics of social platform accountability;
3) a theoretical discussion and/or historical review of social platform accountability;
4) a systematic assessment of content moderation mechanisms (algorithmic filtering, harnessing human labors, etc.) in digital social platforms;
5) a discussion of legal, ethical, and/or regulatory frameworks pertinent with social platform accountability;
6) a discussion of roles and/or interrelationships of different stakeholders (e.g., individual users, tech industry, government, civil society, etc.) in making social platforms more accountable.
Submission Guidelines:
Submitted manuscripts must be in MS Word (.doc) format with a separate title page that includes the title of the paper, full names, affiliations, email addresses, telephone numbers, complete addresses, and biographical sketches of all authors. Please send your submission via email to Hazel Kwon (khkwon@asu.edu)
The main texts should remove any indicator of authorship, and thus be ready for a blind, peer-reviewed process.
Manuscripts must adhere to the APA (6th ed.) style and should contain between 5,000 and 7,000 words, including a 250-word abstract with 5-6 key words, all references, and notes.
Manuscripts must contain original material that has not been previously published elsewhere or is not currently under consideration by another journal.
Submission Date:
The manuscript should be submitted by December 1, 2019. The first round of peer-reviews and decision will be sent out by March 1, 2020, and the revision (if needed) and final decision will be made by August 1, 2020. This special issue is expected to be published online in October/November 2020, with hard copy publication by the end of 2020.
Contact: If you have any question, please contact Hazel Kwon: khkwon@asu.edu