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International Journal on Media Management Special Issue: Call for Papers SOCIAL MEDIA, THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION, AND THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA Today social media applications such as Twitter, Instagram, or Foursquare, which did not even exist a decade ago, form an essential part of the media and communications landscape. Wikipedia, created in 2001, now has approximately 30 million articles in 287 different languages. Facebook, launched in 2004, connects more than 1.3 billion members all over the world and is thus bigger in population size than Europe and North America com- bined. YouTube, founded in 2005, processes more than 3 billion searches per month, which makes it the second biggest search engine behind industry giant Google, who happens to be its owner as well. All of this makes it reasonable to say that social media is no longer limited to Generation Y or Z. They affect everyone, consumers as well as organizations, and there are few companies which are not impacted by this digital metamorphosis. Business executives, consultants, and decision takers alike, all try to understand and decrypt how to make best use of the various applications which exist in the marketplace. In politics, the power of social media communications became obvious when Barack Obama’s campaigning led to his first election in 2008. Many states and public administrations make use of Facebook, Twitter, and co., including the European Union which aims to create a feeling of European identity amongst its citizens via the help of social media. Entire sectors, such as higher education, might be close to disruption due to the arrival of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and small private online courses (SPOCs) and generally the increasing use of social media to facilitate teaching, encourage learning, and engage stu- dents in universities across the globe. Within the entertainment industry, stars such as Britney Spears built their communications strategy completely around social media. And in many firms, the increasing availability of data from social media applications, such as corporate or user generated content, user profiles and habits, and intriguing information as geo-locations, has led to a variety of opportunities and new challenges. The aim of this special issue is to take these possibilities and ana- lyze the impact of social media on a variety of media business subjects within a broad number of perspectives ranging from finance, marketing, and strategy to innovation and entrepreneurship, and covering a multitude of sectors related to media and communications. The above represent only some ideas and directions of the variety of possible areas to closer look at in the scope of this special issue dedicated to the dynamic and quickly moving world of social media. All types of research, disciplinary or interdis- ciplinary, conceptual or empirical (qualitative or quantitative), are welcome. Some exemplary questions that this special issue intends to answer include but are not limited to: ● Social media landscape: state of the art and practice of social media within the media and communications industry ● Acceptance, adoption, and diffusion: integration of social media into the creation, promotion and distribution of media products ● Implications for marketing and media marketplaces: social media and brand equity of media products; integration of social media into the design of “traditional” products ● Social media research methods: innovative ways of data collection (e.g. netnography in the social media context), challenges in the analysis and interpretation relevant to decision making processes in media companies ● Social media and media consumers: influence of social media on Word-of-Mouth (WoM) and viral marketing; cultural differences within a social media strategy; fostering user creativity and entrepreneurial spirit ● Social media and public interest: changing notion of public interest and public media governance ● Return-on-Social media: tools of measurement and investment appraisal in social media ● Legal and ethical considerations: privacy, safety, and security issues ● Public policy: tools and public policy instruments around the world Submission Instructions If authors have any questions regarding the suitability of their work for this special issue, whether topical or methodological, they should not hesitate to contact guest editor Andreas Kaplan at kaplan@escpeurope.eu, or journal editor Bozena Mierzejewska jmm-journal@unisg.ch. Prospective authors should prepare and submit their manuscript according to the guidelines published at: http://bit.ly/1v8PvX8. Articles will be evaluated on their general merit, contribution to new knowledge, and relevance to the topic “Social media, the digital revolution, and the business of media.” Manuscripts that meet the scope of this special issue will be peer-reviewed by two to three reviewers. All submissions must conform to academic standards, be original, and not be published nor under review elsewhere. Submissions must be in English and should be no longer than 6,000 words. Articles must be submitted via the electronic submission system at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hijm. Submission deadline: June 30, 2015 |