Organization and Management Theory OMT

*UPDATE* Call for participation: AOM PDW - Researching Bots in Online Social Networks

  • 1.  *UPDATE* Call for participation: AOM PDW - Researching Bots in Online Social Networks

    Posted 08-02-2022 09:26

    Dear Colleagues,

     

    We invite you to our PDW 'Researching Bots in Online Social Networks' on Sunday, Aug 7th, from 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Pacific Time (UTC-7), at the 2022 AOM Conference in Seattle!

     

    Bots, automated accounts generating and sharing content in online social networks, have a significant presence on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Scholars have associated bots with political propaganda (Caldarelli et al. 2020) and the spread of false news (Shao et al. 2018), suggesting that their deployment imposes major threats to organizations and society (Ferrara et al. 2016). In addition, bots can threaten the validity of online social network research, especially if scholars fail to control for and eliminate confounding effects caused by the presence and activity of these bots (Salge and Karahanna 2018).

     

    In this PDW, we seek to shed light on researching bots in online social networks. In the first part of the PDW, our presenters will discuss how to:

    1. Design online social network research that considers, rather than neglects, bot implications

    2. Extend the frontier of human-bot sociotechnical research

    3. Understand and apply (through a demo session) a state-of-the-art technique to detect bots

     

    After the presentations, roundtable discussions will offer in-person attendees the opportunity to discuss the presented topics and formulate one problem or question for the presenters and panelists to discuss. During the panel, a group of scholars with experience on the topic will discuss the questions from the participants. Last, we will summarize the main discussion points and insights from the PDW and share the main takeaways.

     

     

    SESSION DETAILS

     

    PRESENTERS:

                       Elena Karahanna (University of Georgia)

                       Jason Thatcher (Temple University)

                       Sippo Rossi (Copenhagen Business School)

     

    PANELISTS:

                       Elena Karahanna (University of Georgia)

                       Jason Thatcher (Temple University)

                       Brent Kitchens (University of Virginia)

                       Amber Young (University of Arkansas)

     

    WHEN: Sunday, Aug 7th 2022 - 11:00AM - 12:30PM Pacific Time (UTC-7)

    WHERE: Seattle Convention Center, Room 211 - 2nd Floor. Our session has "Hybrid View: Seattle + Virtual, Zoom "webinar" style", meaning it is live-streamed to the virtual meeting platform for virtual attendees to watch/view the live session. There is no interaction between face-to-face, in-person attendees in Seattle and virtual attendees. Yet, virtual attendees can ask questions and comments into the session text chat.

     

    ORGANIZERS:

                       Carolina Salge (University of Georgia)

                       Anna Priante (Rotterdam School of Management)

                       Aaron Schecter (University of Georgia)

     

    This PDW DOES NOT require special registration and is open to all Academy members interested in studying bots and online social networks at multiple levels of analysis. Our goal is to take the first steps toward building an interdisciplinary community of scholars researching the topic. In this way, we intend to contribute to the increasing prevalence, importance, and robustness of online social network research that appropriately identifies and controls for bots' impact.

    For additional details, please contact Anna Priante (priante@rsm.nl ) or Carolina Salge (calsalge@uga.edu ).

     

    We look forward to meeting you in Seattle!

     

    All the best,

    Anna, Carolina and Aaron

     

     

    Anna Priante

    Assistant Professor

    Rotterdam School of Management

    Erasmus University