Academic Research

Bots Amplify and Redirect Hate Speech in Online Discourse About Racism During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Joshua Uyheng, Daniele Bellutta, and Kathleen M. Carley. Social Media+ Society. [Communications].

Monkeypox Outbreaks in 2022: Battling Another “Pandemic” of Misinformation. Farah Ennab, Faisal A. Nawaz, Kapil Narain, Goodluck Nchasi, Mohammad Yasir Essar, Michael G. Head, Rajeev K. Singla, Atanas G. Atanasov, and Bairong Shen. International Journal of Public Health. [Public Health].

How Political Efficacy Relates to Online and Offline Political Participation: A Multilevel Meta-analysis. Jennifer Oser, Amit Grinson, Shelley Boulianne & Eran Halperin. Political Communication. [Political Science].

A Multistage Analysis of Predicting Public Resilience of Impactful Social Media Crisis Communication in Flooding Emergencies. Umar Ali Bukar, Fatimah Sidi, Marzanah A. Jabar, Rozi Nor Haizan Binti Nor, Salfarina Abdullah, and Iskandar Ishak. IEEE Access. [Computer Science].

Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media. Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, Beth Goldberg, Steve Rathje, and Stephan Lewandowsky. Science Advances. [Psychology].

Popular Press

What We Can Learn from the Shootings in Copenhagen and Social Media. Pernille Tranberg, DataEthics. Our democratic rules are undermined by our behaviour on social media. We must learn to be responsible public citizens – and ensure that our children are debuting later on social media.

Facebook, Twitter dismantle a U.S. influence campaign about Ukraine. Naomi Nix, Washington Post. It's the first time Facebook and Twitter have disrupt a covert influence campaign that was initiated from the United States.

Calls for Papers

2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data. Osaka, Japan, December 17-20, 2022. Submissions Due: September 3, 2022. We solicit high-quality original research papers (and significant work-in-progress papers) in any aspect of Big Data with emphasis on 5Vs (Volume, Velocity, Variety, Value and Veracity), including the Big Data challenges in scientific and engineering, social, sensor/IoT/IoE, and multimedia (audio, video, image, etc.) big data systems and applications. 

Special Issue: Social Media in Service of Aquatic Ecology. Aquatic Ecology. Submissions Due: September 30, 2022. Social media may represent a low-cost and less time-consuming monitoring strategy if compared to traditional methodologies, providing environmental and biodiversity observations that are many times publicly and easily accessed, geo-referenced, real-time, and long-term. This Special Issue emphasizes the growing potential of social media as a data source for databases, also providing insights into aquatic ecology.

Calls for Proposals

Platform Fellowship. Institute for Advanced Study. Deadline: October 15, 2022. The Platform theme aims to incite scholarly thinking across platforms of different kinds, and in different mediums—including analog, electronic, and virtual—to explore the norms and practices that organize, permeate, and stem from them. Scholars from across the social sciences as well as the information sciences, the humanities, law, and related fields are encouraged to apply.

Events, Tutorials & Workshops

Virtual Lecture - Digital Folklore: Contemporary Legends on the Internet. Monday, September 12, 2022, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM MDT. Taylorsville Library. Dr. Lynne S. McNeill will discuss the origin of internet legends and the impact of folklore in an online context on cultural perspectives.

The 2022 DINFOS Social Media Forum. Wednesday, September 14 - Thursday, September 15, 2022. Defense Information School. The 2022 DINFOS Social Media Forum will bring together communications strategists from across the DOD, industry, and academia to share ideas, best practices, insights and strategies for how to advance units, commands, and leadership in an age of unprecedented human connectivity in the digital space.

We would like to thank the S3MC funders for supporting this newsletter, with special thanks to the McCourt School’s Massive Data Institute (MDI) at Georgetown University.