Call for Papers

During the past decades information and communication technologies made tremendous progress. In the course of this development, social media were described as an emerging global public sphere (Castells 2008, Etter, Ravasi & Colleoni 2019), a new ‘agora’ for collective decisions with the beneficial effects for people and planet of creating new spaces for deliberation, providing the opportunity to freely participate in social exchange (Dahlgreen 2005, Castelló, Etter & Nielsen 2016, Glozer, Caruana & Hibbert 2019), facilitating more inclusive and informed debates on grand challenges (e.g., climate change, migrations, pandemics) (Ferraro, Etzion & Gehman 2015; George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi & Tihanyi 2016), and, as a result, improving democracy and collective decision making (Bennett 2003).
 
Yet, the initial promises of enhancing democracy and deliberation that dominated the first decade of the digital space’s growth have taken a decidedly pessimistic turn. Far from establishing a new global inclusive public sphere, social media platforms have turned into a place full of hate speech (Fortuna & Nunes 2018), fake news (Knight & Tsoukas 2019), conspiracy theories (Halford 2022, Uscinski & Parent 2014), exacerbating differences and societal divisions, often leading to the polarization of viewpoints (Sabadoz & Singer 2017, Dawkins 2019, Winkler, Etter & Castello 2020).
 
What previously was described as a space for collective construction of social reality and democratic participation for public decision making based on reason and argument (Habermas 2003), is becoming a space of destruction, polarization, and social divide potentially leading to an erosion of democratic institutions and disintegration of society (Scherer, Neesham, Schoeneborn & Scholz 2023; Scherer & Neesham 2022, Zuboff 2022).
 
Conceiving this phenomenon as a collective destruction of social reality (in reference to Berger & Luckmann, 1996 book “The social construction of reality”) refers to the collective process by which society exists as both objective and subjective reality, emerging from an ongoing dialectical process. Consequently, the “destruction of reality” stresses how the validity and legitimacy of the institutions in democratic society, once taken for granted, are increasingly questioned, attacked, and negated (Furnari, Hudson & Reinecke, 2021), through a constitutive communication process that organize this destruction.
 
How to understand this space for collective destruction of social reality is a question worth endeavoring. It relates to the nature and the conforming antecedents of social media platforms and the way they influence social exchange and public communication. Scholars are starting to describe social media platforms as a space for conflict and agonism (Dawkins 2019, Castelló & Lopez-Berzosa 2021) with a ‘dark’ turn (Trittin-Ulbrich, Scherer & Munro 2020, Etter & Albu 2021). A space where most democratic features of social media are being weaponized to organise immaturity (Scherer, Neesham, Schoeneborn & Scholz 2023, Scherer & Neesham 2022, Harracá, Castelló & Gawer 2022), endangering society and democracy itself (Susskind 2022) and reducing rather than enhancing the control of society over firm actions (Barnett, Henriques & Husted 2020).
 
The collective destruction of social reality through social media appeals to processes of engagement and collective participation increasingly based on echo chambers (Colleoni, Rozza & Arvidsson 2014), underpinned by emotions (Voronov 2014, Toubiana & Zietsma 2017), symbols (Barberá-Tomás, Castelló, de Bakker & Zietsma 2019) or empty signifiers (Colleoni, Illia & Zyglidopoulos 2021), driven by algorithmic dynamics (Airoldi 2021), that constitute new forms of politics and power resembling plebiscitary populism rather than deliberative democracy (Gerbaudo 2022).
 
The collective destruction of social reality also points at the mechanisms of power and the power imbalances of the different actors taking part in the social media platforms (Cutolo & Kenney 2021; Harraca, Castello & Gawer 2022). Power mechanisms have been related to the characteristics of algorithmic management leading to a model of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2022). Also, to how power emerges through institutional processes and mechanisms (Hudson, Okhuysen & Creed 2015), such as collective framing (Furnari 2018, Reinecke &. Ansari 2021) or bottom-up processes of practice emergence (Smets, Aristidou & Whittington 2017). Finally, power mechanisms are increasingly associated with governance structures that nurture them (Flyverbom, Deibert & Matten 2019).
 
In this sub-theme, we invite papers that pay attention to the antecedents, processes, and mechanisms of social media platforms, but also to the conditions and consequences underlying the thrive and the decline of the power of social media. We are interested in unveiling the “true” nature of social media platforms and whether they are inherently destructive and will not improve unless their abolition in their current form (Zuboff 2022), or they are neither good or evil, and can be controlled and regulated outlying the ethical foundations of a new social contract (Gerbaudo 2022). We call for a better understanding of the conditions under which social media platforms might lead to the degeneration or the facilitation of reasonable public debate (Habermas 2021). For example, what conditions for communicative freedom might promote sustained joint (or collective) action (Cohen & Fung 2021). More specifically, we invite papers that expand the frontiers of research and address (but are not necessarily limited to) the following broad research questions and puzzles:

• What are the antecedents, processes, and mechanisms underlying the collective destruction of social reality and the decline of deliberative public sphere?

• How do social media platforms shape contemporary political phenomena such as the diffusion of fake news, conspiracy theories, populism, and authoritarianism? In what ways are engagements online different from offline manifestations of similar phenomena in the past?

• What is the role of manipulating or engaging social emotions, symbols, and cultural scripts in constructing and destructing social realities or exercising or resisting power?

• Which construct does capture the new forms of digital collective participation, i.e. crowds, audiences, publics?    

• What is the relationship between social media and other digital spaces with other forms of power and institutions?

• How do digital infrastructures based on algorithmic management create new cultural habitus, cultural classifications, and new normalcy? What are the consequences for individuals and organizations?

• What organizing and collective action efforts can restore trust in institutions and reconstruct realities in relation to global challenges?

• What governance structures is needed to protect individuals and institutions and counteract fake news, conspiracy theories, populism, and authoritarianism?

• What is the future of social media platforms and how they might evolve?

 
We advocate methodological and theoretical pluralism, welcoming both empirical and conceptual papers that use any qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods, and any theoretical or philosophical perspective.
 

References

• Airoldi, M. (2021). Machine Habitus: Toward a Sociology of Algorithms. Cambridge, UK, Polity Press.
• Barberá-Tomás, D., Castello, I., de Baker, F. & Zietzma, C. (2019). "Energizing through visuals: how social entrepreneurs use emotion-symbolic work for social change." Academy of Management Journal 62(6): 1789–1817.
• Barnett, M. L., Henriques, I. & Husted, B. W. (2020). "The rise and stall of stakeholder influence: How the digital age limits social control." Academy of Management Perspectives 34(1): 48-64.
• Bennett, W. L. (2003). New Media Power: The Internet and Global Activism. Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield.
• Berger, P. & Luckmann, T. (1996). The social construction of reality. London, UK, Penguin.
• Castelló, I., Etter, M. & Nielsen, F. A. (2016). "Strategies of Legitimacy through Social Media: The Networked Strategy." Journal of Management Studies 53(3): 402-432.
• Castelló, I. & D. Lopez-Berzosa (2021). "Affects in Online Stakeholder Engagement: A Dissensus Perspective." Business Ethics Quarterly. Online first: 1-36.
• Castells, M. (2008). "The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616(1): 78-93.
• Cohen, J., & Fung, A. 2021. Democracy and the digital public sphere. In: Bernholz, L., Landemore, H., & Reich, R. (Eds.), Digital Technology and Democratic Theory (pp. 23-61). Chicago, Chicago University Press.
• Colleoni, E., Illia, L. & Zyglidopoulos, S. (2021). “Exploring how publics discursively organize as digital collectives: The use of empty and floating signifiers as organizing devices in social media.” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 6(4): 491–502.
• Colleoni, E., Rozza, A. & Arvidsson, A. (2014). “Echo chamber or public sphere? Predicting political orientation and measuring political homophily in Twitter using big data.” Journal of Communication 64(2): 317-332.
• Cutolo, D. & M. Kenney (2021). "Platform-Dependent Entrepreneurs: Power Asymmetries, Risks, and Strategies in the Platform Economy." Academy of Management Perspectives 35(4): 584-605.
• Dahlgreen, P. (2005). "The Intemet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation." Political Communication 22: 147-162.
• Dawkins, C. E. (2019). "An Agonistic Notion of Political CSR: Melding Activism and Deliberation." Journal of Business Ethics 170 (1): 5-19.
• Etter, M. & Albu O. B. (2021). "Activists in the Dark: Social Media Algorithms and Collective Action in Two Social Movement Organizations." Organization 28(1): 68–91.
• Etter, M., Ravasi, D. & Colleoni, E. (2019). "Social Media and the Formation of Organizational Reputation." Academy of Management Review 44(1): 28-52.
• Ferraro, F., Etzion, D., & Gehman, J. (2015). "Tackling grand challenges pragmatically: Robust action revisited." Organization Studies, 36: 363-390.
• Flyverbom, M., Deibert, R. & Matten, D. (2019). "The Governance of Digital Technology, Big Data, and the Internet: New Roles and Responsibilities for Business." Business & Society 58(1): 3–19.
• Flyverbom, M. & Reinecke, J. (2017). "The Spectacle and Organization Studies." Organization Studies 38(11): 1625–1643.
• Fortuna, P. & Nunes, S. (2018). "A survey on automatic detection of hate speech in text." ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 51(4): 1-30.
• Furnari, S. (2018). "When does an issue trigger change in a field? A comparative approach to issue frames, field structures and types of field change." Human Relations 71(3): 321–348.
• Furnari, S., Hudson, B., & Reinecke, J. (2022). “Re-invigorating Institutional Approaches to Power and Politics: Populism, Post-truth, and the Social Destruction of Reality.” 38th EGOS Colloquium 2022, Wien, Austria, July 7-9.
• George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A. & Tihanyi, L. (2016). "Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research." Academy of Management Journal 59: 1880–1895.
• Gerbaudo, P. (2022). “Theorizing Reactive Democracy: The Social Media Public Sphere, Online Crowds, and the Plebiscitary Logic of Online Reactions.” Democratic Theory 9(2): 1-19.
• Glozer, S., Caruana, R & Hibbert, S. A. (2019). "The never-ending story: Discursive legitimation in social media dialogue." Organization Studies 40(5): 625-650.
• Habermas, J. (2003). Truth and justification. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
• Habermas, J. (2021). ”Überlegungen und Hypothesen zu einem erneuten Strukturwandel der politischen Öffentlichkeit.” Leviathan, 49(37), 470-500.
• Halford, S. J. (2022). “Conspiracy Movements: A Definitional Introduction and Theoretical Exploration of Organized Challenges to Epistemic Authority.” The Sociological Quarterly, 1-18.
• Harracá, M., Castello, I. & Gawer, A. (2022). "How digital platforms organize immaturity: a socio-symbolic framework of platform power." Business Ethics Quarterly, accepted, https://openresearch.surrey.ac.uk/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/How-digital-platforms-organize-immaturity-a/99693659002346
• Hudson, B. A., Okhuysen, G. A., & Creed, W. D. (2015). "Power and institutions: Stones in the road and some yellow bricks." Journal of Management Inquiry 24(3): 233–238.
• Knight, E., & Tsoukas, H. (2019). “When fiction trumps truth: What ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ mean for management studies.” Organization Studies, 40(2), 183–197.
• Reinecke, J. & Ansari, S. (2021). "Microfoundations of Framing: The Interactional Production of Collective Action Frames in the Occupy Movement." Academy of Management Journal 64(2).
• Sabadoz, C. & Singer A. (2017). "Talk Ain’t Cheap: Political CSR and the Challenges of Corporate Deliberation." Business Ethics Quarterly 27(2): 183-211.
• Scherer, A. G. & Neesham C. (2020). "New Challenges to Enlightenment: Why Socio-Technological Conditions Lead to Organized Immaturity and What to Do About It." SSRN Electronic Journal.
• Scherer, A. G., & Neesham, C. (2022). “Organized immaturity in a Post-Kantian perspective: Toward a critical theory of surveillance capitalism.” SSRN Working Paper. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=4266060.
• Scherer, A. G., Neesham, C., Schoeneborn, D. & Scholz, M. (2023). New challenges to enlightenment: How 21st-century socio-technological systems facilitate organized immaturity, and how to counteract it. Business Ethics Quarterly, forthcoming.
• Smets, M., Aristidou, A. & Whittington, R. (2017). Towards a practice-driven institutionalism. In R. Greenwood, C. Oliver and T. B. Lawrence (Eds), SAGE handbook of organizational institutionalism. London, SAGE (pp.365–389).
• Susskind, J. (2022). The digital republic. On freedom and democracy in the 21th century. London, Bloomsbury.
• Toubiana, M. and Zietsma C. (2017). "The Message is on the Wall? Emotions, Social Media and the Dynamics of Institutional Complexity." Academy of Management Journal 60(3): 922–953.
• Trittin-Ulbrich, H., Scherer, A. G. & Munro, I. (2020). "Exploring the dark and unexpected sides of digitalization: Toward a critical agenda." Organization 28(1): 8-25.
• Uscinski, J. E., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American Conspiracy Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Voronov, M. (2014). “Toward a Toolkit for Emotionalizing Institutional Theory. Emotions and the Organizational Fabric”, In N. M. Ashkanasy, W. J. Zerbe and E. J. Hätel (Eds), Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 10. London, UK, Emerald Group Publishing Limited (pp.167–196).
• Winkler, P., Etter, M., & Castelló, I. (2020). “Vicious and virtuous circles of aspirational talk: From self-persuasive to agonistic CSR rhetoric.” Business & Society, 59(1), 98–128.
• Winkler, D., Uberbacher, F. & Scherer, A. (2020). "Organizational Legitimation in a Polarized Media Landscape: The Role of Robust Organizational Impression Management.” Academy of Management. Proceedings: online. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2020.14868abstract
• Zuboff, S. (2022). "Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy? The Death Match of Institutional Orders and the Politics of Knowledge in Our Information Civilization." Organization Theory 3: 1-79.
•