Academic research on social media is growing exponentially across various disciplines including: Communications, Information / Library Science, Computer Science, Business, Sociology, Education, Psychology, Health and others. The Web of Science alone indexed nearly 5,000 journal and conference publications over the last decade. This growing body of research revealed many interesting factors about social media platforms, their users, and a glimpse of our society at large. But are we any closer to understanding the broader implications of social media on our increasing networked society?
The 2015 Social Media & Society Conference (#SMSociety15) invites scholarly and original submissions that build on the previous work and critically evaluate the role of social media for social and political change, community engagement, marketing, new forms of governance, support of individuals and organizations in domains such as business, information, management, public administration, academia, health, and journalism (just to mention a few). We are also calling for submissions that develop and apply novel methods and theories to collect, analyze, and visualize social media data as well as those that discuss ethical and privacy implications of using big and small data. We welcome both quantitative and qualitative work in the broad area of Social Media & Society that crosses interdisciplinary boundaries and expands our understanding of the current and future trends in social media.
Whether you are just starting a new research project or ready to report on the final results, you will find that #SMSociety15 is a great venue for you! The 2015 conference invites a wide range of submissions: from short papers on completed or well-developed projects to work-in-progress paper abstracts, from panel discussions to poster presentations. New to this year, we are also calling for proposals to host half-day workshops on a well-defined area or technical tutorials that will examine a particular method or tool for the analysis of social media data in more detail.

PUBLISHING OPPORTUNITIES
Short papers presented at the conference will be published in the conference proceedings by ACM International Conference Proceeding Series (ICPS), subject to conference registration. Selected papers will also be invited to submit their full papers to the special issue of the Information, Communication & Society journal (published by Taylor & Francis).

BACKGROUND
The Social Media & Society Conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. Now, in its 6th year, the 2015 Conference will be held in Toronto, Canada from July 27 to 29, 2015. From its inception, the conference has focused on the best practices for studying the impact and implications of social media on society. Organized by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University, the conference provides attendees an opportunity to exchange ideas, present their original research, learn about recently completed and work-in-progress studies, and strengthen connections with peers. The 2014 conference hosted over 200 attendees, featured research from 238 authors across several fields from 21 different countries.

TYPES OF SUBMISSIONS
Please visit the Submission Page for a full description of the submission types.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
Social Media & Small Data
Case Studies of Online Communities Formed on Social Media
Case Studies of Offline Communities that Rely on Social Media
Sampling Issues
Value of Small Data

Social Media & Big Data
Visualization of Social Media Data
Social Media Data Mining
Scalability Issues & Social Media Data
Social Media Analytics
Ethics of Big Data

Social Media Impact on Society
Private Self/Public Self
The Sharing/Attention Economy
Virality & Memes
Political Mobilization & Engagement
Social Media & Health
Social Media & Business (Marketing, PR, HR, Risk Management, etc.)
Social Media & Academia (Alternative Metrics, Learning Analytics, etc.)
Social Media & Public Administration
Social Media & the News

Theories & Methods
Qualitative & Quantitative Approaches
Opinion Mining & Sentiment Analysis
Social Network Analysis
Theoretical Models for Studying, Analysing and Understanding Social Media

Online/Offline Communities
Trust & Credibility in Social Media
Online Community Detection
Influential User Detection
Online Identity

Social Media & Mobile
App-ification of the Society
Privacy & Security Issues in the Mobile World
Apps for the Social Good
Networking Apps