Hi AoIRers, I’m pleased to announce that danah boyd and I will be guest editors of a special theme issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication focusing on social network sites. The call is below and online at: http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dmb/jcmc-sns/ Please note the deadline for abstracts is Nov. 28. I know many of you are working in this area, so please consider submitting. Thanks, Nicole CALL FOR PAPERS Special Theme Issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication Social Network Sites: People, Practice, and Culture GUEST EDITORS: • danah boyd, University of California-Berkeley • Nicole Ellison, Michigan State University DEADLINES: • Abstracts due: November 28, 2006 • Decisions on abstracts: December 8, 2006 • Full papers due: February 28, 2007 • Anticipated publication: October 2007 / January 2008 FOCUS: Recently, social network sites like Cyworld, MySpace, orkut, and Facebook have captured the public's attention and attracted millions of users. Such sites typically enable individuals to create a profile that defines their online personae through the use of photographs, text, and multimedia elements. More importantly, social network sites enable individuals to articulate their social connections visibly on the site, a practice that may help individuals meet self-presentational and social goals. "Friends" links offer users a window into an emerging and fluid social landscape, allowing them to explore and interact with a larger network via profiles and the communication tools they offer. Together, profiles, traversable "friends" links, and communication tools comprise the backbone of social network sites. This special issue seeks to bring together scholarship on social network sites to highlight current understanding of the practices, implications, culture, and meaning of such sites. There are currently hundreds of social network sites, spanning a wide range of individuals, interests, and technological affordances. While the key technological features are fairly consistent, the cultures that emerge in these sites are varied. For example, music is the cultural glue of some sites, while others gather people around particular interests, such as political beliefs or pet ownership. Some sites cater to a wide variety of people, while others target people based on race, age, sexuality, religion, language, or nationality. Sites vary in the extent to which they incorporate new tools, such as mobile technologies, blogging, and photo/video-sharing.     This special edition will bring together experts from the fields of information, communication, sociology, anthropology, HCI, policy, design, and education to explore the different socio-cultural practices that take place on social network sites. We are looking for papers that address social network sites from a variety of perspectives and from different methodological and theoretical traditions. Potential questions that submissions might address include, but are not limited to: • What strategies do individuals use to craft an online presentation of self in a profile, and for what audiences? • What privacy or other concerns emerge from use of these sites? What kinds of policy decisions and educational practices might ameliorate these concerns? • Can we predict social, psychological, or other outcomes from profile and network analysis? • How can "friends" networks most usefully be visualized? What can we learn from network visualizations? • How does the network structure differ among sites, and what are the social and cultural implications of these differences? How does the structure of networks in these sites compare to the networks of other communities? • What are the patterns of relationship development in these spaces? Do individuals use these sites to meet new people or to maintain pre-existing, offline connections? • What role do race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation play in social network sites? While all social network sites allow participants to create a profile and publicly articulate their social connections within the system, the line between social network sites and dating sites, MMOGs, media sharing sites, blogging tools, and other social community sites can be blurry. Rather than enforcing a strict definition of what constitutes a social network site, we ask authors to explain how their site of study fits into a rubric of social network sites. SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Potential authors should submit a preliminary proposal of 500 words by November 28, 2006, to danah boyd (dmb@sims.berkeley.edu) and Nicole Ellison (nellison@msu.edu). TXT, RTF or DOC formats are preferred. Proposals should indicate (a) the central research question; (b) theoretical and methodological frameworks that will be used in the analysis; (c) a preliminary sketch of what claims the author(s) expect to make; (d) the author(s) rubric of what constitutes a social network site and how their research fits into this framework. While the proposal should include which site(s) is being addressed, the author(s) can assume that the reviewers are familiar with the site. Thus, it is not necessary to describe the site in detail in the proposal. A brief author biography should also be submitted. Early submissions and questions are welcome. Authors whose proposals are accepted for inclusion will be invited to submit a full paper of roughly 7,000-9,000 words for peer review by February 28, 2007. Anticipated publication date for the special issue is October 2007 or January 2008. Since JCMC is an interdisciplinary journal, authors should plan for papers that will be accessible to non-specialists, and should make their papers relevant to an interdisciplinary audience.