Introduction to the Minitrack on Critical and Ethical Studies of Digital and Social Media

This minitrack addresses the cultural and political impacts of digital and social media (DSM), interrogating how DSM fundamentally impacts how we consume, circulate, and make sense of networked information. Both papers contain two broad themes that will interest and inspire scholars of social media and systems science. First, the studies critically interrogate how and when digital and social media support existing power structures or realign power individuals connecting to groups and making community online. Second, both of these contemporary case studies raise awareness and illustrate the ethical issues associated with doing research on digital and social media in platforms that contain black boxes within black boxes. Conceptually and empirically grounded, each paper provides readers with new metaphors and ethical considerations for interpreting information exchange in networked communities, as well as key ideas and paradigms for the science of social media. By addressing the cultural and political impacts of DSM, both of these groundbreaking and original studies illustrate how the flow of data through digital and social media act to organize the social and political dimensions of these participatory information systems.