Journal Description
- Indexed in: Google Scholar, DOAJ, Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus
- Launched in 2015
- A broad selection of published Special Collections
Social Media + Society (SM+S) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that focuses on advancing the understanding of social media and its impact on societies past, present and future. Please see the Aims and Scope tab for further information.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Open access article processing charge (APC) information
The APC for this journal is currently 1000 USD.
The article processing charge (APC) is payable when a manuscript is accepted after peer review, before it is published. The APC is subject to taxes where applicable. Please see further details here.
Submission information
Submit your manuscript today at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/smas
Please see the Submission Guidelines tab for more information on how to submit your article to the journal.
Contact
Please direct any queries to sms@sagepub.com
Journal Feed
- by Bridget BarrettSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. Studies on digital advertising effects claim that the primary purposes of online ads are persuasive: They seek to change vote choice or voters’ attitudes toward candidates. But recent scholarship has noted that social media’s unique affordances encourage electoral campaigns to use them in specific ways, such as using Facebook’s ads for email list-building. We conceptualize such strategic campaign goals as instrumental purposes of advertisements. We develop novel measures to test these instrumental effects. In an online survey experiment using Facebook ads from the 2020 Biden and Trump campaigns, we test […]
- by Sozen BasturkSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. This article explores a novel concept called “straight cash master” emerging on social media platforms, especially X. The concept refers to relationships where self-identified straight men act as masters and primarily gay individuals take on the role of slaves. Several factors make this concept worthy of examination. First, these relationships are complex, involving dimensions of financial domination, sexuality, emotionality, and psychology. Second, while elements of sex work, fetishism, and BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism) culture are present, categorizing these masters solely as sex workers or performers and using a […]
- by Taewoo KangSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. This article examines a model positing that overconfidence in political understanding resulting from social media use for news and politics hampers traditional media use. It confirms a positive relationship between Facebook political information experiences and overconfidence in political understanding. However, contrary to expectations, there is a positive relationship between overconfidence and traditional media use. An exploratory post hoc analysis, viewed through the lens of truth vs. false-default orientations, suggests overconfident users might use traditional news outlets to confirm their sense of knowledge, thereby exhibiting a false-default orientation on social media […]
- by Luzhou LiSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. There have been global regulatory debates and efforts aimed at holding digital platforms accountable for the public interest. Utilizing mixed methods of documentary research and expert interviews, this article examines how the Chinese digital giant Tencent leverages its adaptive capabilities for corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in response to increasingly stringent regulation in China. Specifically, it explores Tencent’s organizational restructuring, including the establishment of the sustainable social value (SSV) division, as well as the accompanying corporate practices and discursive strategies aimed at enhancing its legitimacy. As an exemplar of the […]
- by Nathan A. SilverSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. Tobacco content on Twitter (X) generally opposes regulation. Although a near real-time data source of the public’s response to prominent events heightens the allure of extrapolating public sentiment from Twitter content, tobacco policy sentiment on the platform may be more indicative of industry-affiliated top users. We examined 2 years of tobacco policy discussion on Twitter (X) at the user level (N = 3,159,807 posts) from September 2019 to July 2021. We sampled the 100 most followed, amplified (retweets), influential (H index), and connected (betweenness centrality) users at three different time periods: pre-COVID […]
- by Zea SzebeniSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. This study conceptualizes “banana populism,” a novel analytical framework to examine how whimsical imagery functions in in contemporary populism. Banana populism utilizes the ordinary—exemplified by the banana—for its ubiquity, inherent humor, and absurdity, transforming these elements into powerful political tools. These articulations effectively mainstream extreme ideologies, invite affective investment from broad publics, and delineate antagonistic frontiers by employing familiar cultural symbols and everyday objects, such as military attire or MAGA hats. Such performative elements not only enhance the authenticity of populist leaders but also make their messages more accessible and […]
- by Emily GodwinSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. Internet memes have emerged as the de facto language of the internet, where standardized memetic templates and characters distill and communicate narratives in simple, shareable formats. While prior research has highlighted their broad appeal as they traverse diverse audiences, their cultural function within online communities has received less attention. To investigate this function, we draw on cognitive anthropological conceptualizations of culture and theorize internet memes as “cultural representations.” We analyze 544 memes shared across two interconnected conspiratorial subreddits about COVID-19 between 2020 and 2022, employing a combination of content and […]
- by Adalia Y. H. GohSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. With the abundance of social media content that promotes unrealistic beauty standards, there are growing concerns about the potential negative impact of social media use on body image satisfaction. While some studies highlight negative associations, others present null effects, pointing to methodological limitations like biased and unreliable self-reported screen time measures and a focus on singular platforms. Addressing these gaps, our study employed a daily diary method to objectively measure social media screen time across six major platforms (Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook), alongside daily body image dissatisfaction […]
- by Xiyu CaoSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. Previous studies have discussed digital dating by the “love-is-fast” metaphor and the successful and failed stories on dating platforms to debate the ideal of modern intimacy; however, the conceptualization of rituals and mechanisms for constructing intimacy in a continuum of online and offline everyday life has been left unstudied. Drawing on Eva Illouz’s argument on a regime of performativity of emotions and ritual scholarship, this study investigates the staged (dys)functioning of platform-constructed acts. Based on 35 interviews and 14-month user-led cross-platform walkthroughs, this study examines how users deployed and interpreted […]
- by Samuel TannerSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. A growing body of research highlights digital platforms like TikTok’s pivotal role in shaping meaning for their users, particularly regarding gender perceptions. With TikTok increasingly serving as a search engine for teens, understanding how opinions are formed necessitates examining online content and interactions. Our article focuses on the construction of masculinity and gender dynamics with sigma videos on TikTok, emphasizing the digital practices that foster toxic communication. We define toxic communication as the deliberate framing and intensification of gender relations through the lens of male control and domination, alongside the […]
- by Debjani ChakrabortySocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. This study explores digital privacy perceptions and behaviors among married women in rural India, a rapidly expanding demographic of mobile media and Internet users in the Global South. This ethnographic study found that women’s experience of privacy entails balancing between norms related to “hide” and “having nothing to hide.” Specifically, conflicting practices of avoiding online visibility while sharing passwords and accounts with family members exist to conform to their expected gender performance. The study highlights the dual nature of privacy practices that relate to the horizontal dimensions of privacy among […]
- by Hui LinSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. An increasing number of users are aware of algorithmically driven content curation. Yet, while numerous studies have examined how people understand algorithmic power, there are insufficient numbers of studies about how people respond to and resist algorithmic curation in different sociocultural contexts. This article adopts a walk-through method and a diary-interview approach with 31 participants to investigate user resistance to algorithmic curation in different sociocultural circumstances. Drawing on the theoretical framework of folk theories and user resistance to algorithms, this study reveals a paradox in users’ algorithmic awareness and resistance […]
- by Andreas SchmitzSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. Reddit, one of the largest global social media platforms, has undergone significant transformations since its inception in 2005. From a loosely structured, niche platform to a globally recognized company with a standardized and regulated governance system, Reddit’s evolution has been marked by a shift in the power dynamics between its owners, moderators, and users. 2015 and 2023 were marked by the occurrence of two prominent protests, termed “blackouts.” Moderators of numerous subreddits, though not all, disabled public access to their subreddits, thereby protesting the company’s policies and policy changes and […]
- by Fabienne Darling-WolfSocial Media + Society, Volume 11, Issue 1, January-March 2025. Common to scholarly analyses of the “digital revolution” is their inclination to deploy technology—the platforms, their affordances, the virtual spaces they create—as the main entry into evaluations of digital media’s impact on socio-cultural organization. While certainly useful in helping us understand the dynamics of digital practices and spaces, these narratives often fail to provide a fuller portrait of individuals’ broader relationship to the technological world shaped not (only) by their digital media use (or lack thereof) but also by their mere awareness of the existence of digital tools. Drawing from […]