Published on April 21, 2015

Communication Design Quarterly (CDQ), the peer reviewed publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC) is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming special issue that will examine communication design practices for social media.  This special issue will be published in February of 2016.

Special Issue Description

Social media are now a part of the daily lives of over a billion persons around the world.  These new, interactive forms of media, however, bring with them new conditions and expectations related to the presentation and the exchange of information (Vie, 2014; Kimme Hea, 2014). As organizations increasingly seek ways to use these technologies for connecting to different audiences, communication designers need to find new methods for using these technologies to share a range of content with a variety of individuals (c.f. Briones et al, 2011; Potts, 2013).

This special issue seeks to examine communication design practices related to using social medial for sharing information with different audiences.

The editorial staff of CDQ invites proposals for papers on applied research or theory, case histories/studies, commentaries, teaching approaches, and annotated bibliographies that address topics including

  • Practices for sharing information via social media
  • Methods for researching/understanding audience expectations related to social media
  • Approaches to creating effective personas for users of social media
  • Strategies for developing content for simultaneous distribution across different social media platforms
  • Perspectives on using social media as a research tool for understanding audiences and audience expectations
  • Practices for sharing different content (e.g., health and medical content, product information, risk and crisis communiqués) through social media
  • Approaches for connecting to greater global audiences through social media
  • Methods for assessing the social media options available for sharing information with audiences
  • Cases where social media reveal new roles (or new faces for core competencies) of communication designers/technical and professional and technical communication
  • Opportunities for turning ambient data (searchable social media databases like Twitter or APIs like FitBit) into actionable design
  • Prospects for new career paths, research sites, or professional practices revealed in studies of social media transcripts or design strategies
  • Examples where social media either became a public liability or effectively addressed a public concern (e.g., an organizational image problem or a technical problem)

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should be between 250-300 words in length and are due by 1 June 2015.  Proposals should be sent to kirk.stamant@gmail.com

All proposals should include

  • The submitter’s name, affiliation, and email address
  • A tentative, descriptive title for the proposed article
  • A summary of the topic/focus of the proposed article
  • An explanation of how the proposed topic/focus connects to the theme of the special issue
  • An overview of the structure/organization of the proposed article (i.e., how the author will address the topic within the context of the proposed article)

Production Schedule

The schedule for the special issue is as follows:

1 June 2015 – Proposals due
15 June 2015 – Decisions on proposals sent to submitters
15 August 2015 – Initial manuscripts due
15 September 2015 – Reviewer comments to authors
1 November 2015 – Revised manuscripts due
15 November 2015 – Final publishing decisions to contributors
February 2016 – Publication of special issue

Contact Information

Completed proposals should be sent to Kirk St.Amant at kirk.stamant@gmail.com

Questions about proposal topics or about the focus of this special issue should be sent to Kirk St.Amant at kirk.stamant@gmail.com