[Commlist] Call for Chapters: Edited Collection about Social Media Crises [University of Toronto Press]

*CALL FOR CHAPTERS for an Edited Collection on the Culture of the Social 
Media Crisis*

Authors are invited to contribute chapters to an upcoming edited 
collection on crisis communication and social media: /*The Culture of 
the Social Media Crisis: Causes, Impact, Consequences*/.The book’s 
chapters will explore the cultural rise in prominence of the social 
media crisis, its unique characteristics, and its place in the broader 
academic field of crisis communication. This book project is under 
contract with *University of Toronto Press* and is anticipated to be 
published in 2025.

Social media crises have caught organizations, prominent and everyday 
people, and public relations practitioners off-guard despite crisis 
communication being a subject of academic study for many decades. In 
recent years, we have seen a surge in social media crises, with 
controversies ranging from celebrity scandals to political conflicts to 
public health debates. Controversial posts are causing organizations to 
spend considerable resources dealing with social media threats to their 
reputations and, ultimately, bottom lines. High-profile individuals face 
mobs of users—some real, some bots—who demand real-world consequences 
for Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram posts that they don’t like. 
Even everyday people face reputational damage and job loss from social 
media posts that offend some group of social media users somewhere in 
the world.

This edited collection will explore the nature, characteristics, and 
consequences of this new kind of crisis that originates on social media 
platforms. While crises in the ‘real world’ involving bodies, products, 
or the natural environment have been studied extensively, online crises 
rooted in language, image, and video remain relatively unexplored as a 
cultural phenomenon. Yet these situations can also cause significant 
damage to images, reputations, operations, and livelihoods.

The editor seeks chapters that examine case studies and apply or develop 
theoretical approaches to understand what makes the social media crisis 
unique.

In addition to the academic field of crisis communication proper, the 
editor welcomes perspectives from various disciplines, including but not 
limited to communication studies, cultural studies, management, 
political science, law, sociology, psychology, healthcare, and media 
studies.

The following list offers possible topics to consider; however, it is by 
no means an exhaustive one, and submissions are welcomed on any aspect 
that falls within the scope of this book:

  * Online political divides, polarization, and tribalism
  * Conditions for the emergence of the social media crisis
  * How a paracrisis turns into a crisis
  * Public health/pandemic social media crises
  * Online debates over meaning and language that lead to a crisis
  * The role of bots in fomenting crisis situations
  * Old tweets that cause new problems
  * User attention to problematic social media content
  * Comparisons between the social media crisis and the offline crisis
  * The role of online mobs in crisis formation
  * The place of social media algorithms in online crisis development
  * Social media crises and the erosion of institutional trust
  * The debate over online cancel culture
  * Online outrage and crisis
  * Real-life consequences of social media crises as reasonable or 
overblown
  * Legal, regulatory, and ethical implications
  * The discursive nature of this kind of crisis (text, image, video)
  * The influence of a social media crisis on public perceptions and
    opinions
  * The role of social media influencers
  * Artificial intelligence in faking online crisis situations
    (Midjourney, ChatGPT etc.)

This edited collection will provide new directions for researchers and 
emphasize recent case studies to illuminate theory.

Please submit a CV and a chapter proposal of about 500 words to the 
editor, Duncan Koerber, at (dkoerber /at/ brocku.ca) by December 15, 2023. 
Proposals should explain the overall argument or point of the chapter, 
describe the case(s) to be examined, outline the chapter’s sections, and 
explain the chapter’s connection to crisis communication theories and/or 
prior research. Authors will be notified of proposal acceptance by 
February 1, 2024. Full chapters of about 6000 words (excluding 
references) will be due by June 1, 2024.


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