Special Issue: Social Media in Crisis Management

International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI)

Taylor & Francis; 2015 Impact Factor: 1.260

This call for papers is based on the “Social Media Studies” track (usually one of the tracks with the most submissions) at previous ISCRAM conferences. With this special issue we aim to invite scholars from ISCRAM and other venues to contribute high level contributions to this field of research.

Organizing Editors

• Christian Reuter* (University of Siegen)
• Amanda Hughes (Utah State University)
• Starr Roxanne Hiltz (New Jersey Institute of Technology)
• Imran Muhammad (Qatar Computing Research Institute)
• Linda Plotnick (Jacksonville State University)

*Corresponding guest editor: christian.reuter@uni-siegen.de

Timeline

• Call for paper published 1^st of December 2016
• Abstract due (optional): 1^st of May 2017
• Submissions due: 1^st of July 2017
• First Notifications: 1^st of September 2017
• Revisions due: 1^st of October 2017
• Second Notifications: 1^st of December 2017
• Final Versions: 15^th of December 2017
• Special Issue published: 2018

Keywords

social media, digital volunteers, microblogging, computer-mediated communication, social computing, crisis informatics, crowdsourcing, big data analysis

Description

The aim is to showcase current research on how the use of Social Media can help in crisis management and response. We invite papers that provide rich description and/or evaluation of the design and/or actual use of Social Media for collaboration and/or widespread participation in any phase of crisis management, from initial planning and preparedness, through detection, response, and recovery phases.

Example Topics

• Studies of the use of social media in crises, either for information sharing that can provide useful information for managers and citizens, as a pull technology, or for dissemination of information to the public as a push technology. This includes identification of barriers to effective use of social media by emergency response agencies.
• Innovations in design or use of social media that solve potential problems such as issues of information overload, assessment of information trustworthiness, or ethical issues such as privacy.
• Issues and techniques for mining and near-real-time processing of Social Media data to enable early decision-making.
• Innovative human-computer interaction techniques and methodologies relevant to the design, analysis, and evaluation of applications useful for crisis management using social media.
• Studies of crowdsourcing and other new practices such as the use of “digital volunteers” that engage the public and connect communities.

Submission

The highest scientific quality with practical impact is critical for each paper. The publications must be original papers. If they are based on conference proceedings, additional contributions are necessary. The expected length is about 6,000-12,000 words. All contributions will be rigorously peer reviewed.

Submissions: http://ijhc.edmgr.com/

Word-Template to be used for submissions

Literature

• Hiltz, S., Kushma, J., & Plotnick, L. (2014). Use of Social Media by US Public Sector Emergency Managers: Barriers and Wish Lists. In Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) (pp. 600–609).
• Hughes, A. L., Denis, L. A. S., Palen, L., & Anderson, K. M. (2014). Online Public Communications by Police & Fire Services during the 2012 Hurricane Sandy. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) (pp. 1505–1514). Toronto, Canada: ACM.
• Imran, M., Castillo, C., Diaz, F., & Vieweg, S. (2015). Processing Social Media Messages in Mass Emergency: A Survey. ACM Computing Surveys (Vol. 47). https://doi.org/10.1145/2771588
• Palen, L., & Anderson, K. M. (2016). Crisis informatics: New data for extraordinary times. Science, 353(6296), 224–225. article. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aag2579
• Plotnick, L., Hiltz, S. R., Kushma, J. a, & Tapia, A. (2015). Red Tape : Attitudes and Issues Related to Use of Social Media by U . S . County- Level Emergency Managers. In Proceedings of the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM). Kristiansand, Norway.
• Reuter, C., Ludwig, T., Kaufhold, M.-A., & Spielhofer, T. (2016). Emergency Services Attitudes towards Social Media: A Quantitative and Qualitative Survey across Europe. International Journal on Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), 95, 96–111.