The Dark Side of Social Media

May 16th, 2017, Paris School of Business, 59 Rue Nationale, 75013 Paris

The Big Data & Market Insights Chair in sponsoring this new international research workshop that focuses on the ‘dark’ effects of social media. The level of analysis is the individual, group, organization or the society as a whole, when those actors are interacting with the platforms, services and emerging technological artefacts commonly known as social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

A large body of research has considered the positive aspects of social media. However, emerging research and practice are beginning to focus on complex and often alarming ways in which use of social media may harmfully affect individuals, organizations and societies. For example, data leakage prevention and suspicious networks detection, negative word-of-mouth dynamics and their repercussions on marketing and e-reputation, privacy violation, anxiety and depression, addiction, misrepresentation and negative psychological consequences are some of the issues that have been studied so far.

Many others require a deepened interest, especially within the organizational settings, in which social media pervasive usage might contribute to jeopardize systems security, disrupt work habits and impoverish individual performance via information overload, technostress and fatigue. Larger effects include enabling racism, terrorism and cyber-crime.

This workshop welcomes submissions form diverse domains including sociology, psychology, marketing, human resources, computer science, etc. All methodological approaches are equally appreciated, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodologies, conceptual building and design science.

Call for papers and registration