CFP: HICSS 42 : Social Networks and Virtual Worlds for Work, Learning, and Play

Call for Papers

*Social Networks and Virtual Worlds for Work, 
Learning, and Play* Minitrack in the 
*Internet and the Digital Economy Track*
Forty-Second Hawaii International 
Conference on Systems Sciences
(HICSS-42).

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, virtualcommunities
• 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


IMPORTANT DATES:

Abstracts (optional): April 15, 2008 
Full Paper Submission: June 15, 2008 

All papers must conform to HICSS formatting standards:
http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_42/authorinstruction.htm

Please contact any of the organizers with
questions about submissions to this
minitrack. Abstracts may be sent to
any of the organizers.

Caroline Haythornthwaite (haythorn@uiuc.edu),
Graduate School of Library and
Information Science,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Karine Barzilai-Nahon (karineb@u.washington.edu),
The Information School,
University of Washington

Paul Benjamin Lowry (Paul.Lowry.PhD@gmail.com),
Information Systems Department,
Kevin Rollins Center for e-Business,
Marriott School, Brigham Young

Ian MacInnes (IMacInne@syr.edu),
School of Information Studies,
Syracuse University


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Caroline Haythornthwaite
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820