Introduction to the Critical and Ethical Studies of Digital and Social Media Minitrack

This minitrack focuses on two themes: a) studies that critically interrogate how and when digital and social media (DSM) support existing power structures or realign power structures affecting underrepresented or marginalized groups, and b) studies that raise awareness of or illustrate the ethical issues associated with doing research on digital and social media. The papers in this minitrack discuss a wide range of topics related to these themes and span a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, ranging from youth social media use and social media data analysis, to the intersection of fitness trackers and gender, to theories to consider in ethical studies of artificial intelligence research. The following introduction will review the overarching themes connecting these papers in additional detail, before discussing each paper's fit within these themes and finally providing individual descriptions of each paper.