Social Networks and Virtual Worlds for Work, Learning and Play

• Caroline Haythornthwaite – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [Primary Contact]
• Karine Barzilai-Nahon - University of Washington

• Paul Benjamin Lowry  - Brigham Young

• Ian MacInnes - Syracuse University

For a pdf version press here

Additional detail may be found on HICSS primary web site

Our online ways and means of connecting with others and maintaining ties for everyday life, community, work, learning and play are changing dramatically with the increasing adoption and use of social networking applications such as Facebook, MySpace, etc., immersive worlds such as Second Life, and more comprehensive online support environments such as collaboratories, virtual communities, and online communities of practice. These new settings provide the infrastructure for new patterns of connectivity, new ways of working, learning and playing with known and unknown others, locally and globally distributed, with common and diverse cultural experiences.

This minitrack for HICSS 42 calls for papers that address the design, analysis, theory, review, experiments and/or observation of social networks, virtual communities, and virtual worlds in the contexts of work, school, home, community, and play. Papers from all methodological approaches are welcome, including design and user studies, quantitative and qualitative research, and theoretical work. Interdisciplinary work is particularly encouraged. All papers should be well grounded in the literature, present original work, and make a substantial addition to the literature in this area.

Examples of topics for this minitrack include, but are not limited to the

following:

•       Online communities: organizational, group and individual behavior

•       Design for online networks and communities

•       E-learning: structures, implementation, and practices

•       Interaction between the off-line and online community

•       Online gaming: design, economics, behavior

•       Collaborative work, learning or gaming online

•       Peer-to-peer or mobile services for virtual communities

•       Case studies and topologies of online communities

•       Theoretical models of virtual worlds

•       Business and organizational models of virtual worlds

•       Economic behaviors in virtual worlds, and game economies

•       Synergies and conflicts between real and virtual worlds

•       Identity in virtual worlds

•       Interface design for social networking, virtual worlds, virtual communities

•       Social networking agents

•       Anti-social behavior, online addiction, predatory behavior online

•       Legal and ethical issues of virtual worlds

•       Privacy and security issues in online networks

All papers must conform to HICSS formatting standards:

http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_42/authorinstruction.htm

Important Deadlines

• Abstracts
  Authors may contact Minitrack Chairs for guidance and indication of appropriate content at anytime.
• June 15, 2008
  • Authors submit full papers to the Peer Review System, following Author Instructions found on the HICSS web site. All papers will be submitted in double column publication format and limited to 10 pages including diagrams and references. Papers undergo a double-blind review.
• August 15, 2008
  • Acceptance/Rejection notices are sent to Authors via the Peer Review System.
• September 15, 2008
  • Authors submit Final Version of papers following submission instructions on the Peer Review System web site. At least one author of each paper must register by this date with specific plans to attend the conference to present the paper.

Instructions for Paper Submission

• HICSS papers must contain original material not previously published, or currently submitted elsewhere
• Do not submit the manuscript to more than one mini-track. If unsure which mini-track is appropriate, submit the abstract to the Track Chair for guidance.
• Submit your full paper according to the detailed formatting and submission instructions found on the HICSS website. Note: All papers will be submitted in double column publication format and limited to 10 pages including diagrams and references. HICSS will conduct double-blind reviews of each submitted paper.

HICSS conferences are devoted to advances in the information, computer, and system sciences, and encompass developments in both theory and practice. Invited papers may be theoretical, conceptual, tutorial or descriptive in nature. Submissions undergo a double-blind peer referee process and those selected for presentation will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Submissions must not have been previously published.