Track: Internet and the Digital Economy
Minitrack: Social Networks and Virtual Worlds for Work, Learning,
--------------- and Play

Our online ways and means of connecting with others and maintaining ties for everyday life, community, work, learning and play are changing dramatically with the increasing adoption and use of social networking applications such as Facebook, MySpace, etc., immersive worlds such as Second Life, and more comprehensive online support environments such as collaboratories, virtual communities, and online communities of practice. These new settings provide the infrastructure for new patterns of connectivity, new ways of working, learning and playing with known and unknown others, locally and globally distributed, with common and diverse cultural experiences.

This minitrack for HICSS 42 calls for papers that address the design, analysis, theory, review, experiments and/or observation of social networks, virtual communities, and virtual worlds in the contexts of work, school, home, community, and play. Papers from all methodological approaches are welcome, including design and user studies, quantitative and qualitative research, and theoretical work. Interdisciplinary work is
particularly encouraged. All papers should be well grounded in the literature, present original work, and make a substantial addition to the literature in this area

Topics and research areas include, but are not limited to:
* Online communities: organizational, group and individual behavior
* Design for online networks and communities
* E-learning: structures, implementation, and practices
* Interaction between the off-line and online community
* Online gaming: design, economics, behavior
* Collaborative work, learning or gaming online
* Peer-to-peer or mobile services for virtual communities
* Case studies and topologies of online communities
* Theoretical models of virtual worlds
* Business and organizational models of virtual worlds
* Economic behaviors in virtual worlds, and game economies
* Synergies and conflicts between real and virtual worlds
* Identity in virtual worlds
* Interface design for social networking, virtual worlds, virtual communities
* Social networking agents
* Anti-social behavior, online addiction, predatory behavior online
* Legal and ethical issues of virtual worlds
* Privacy and security issues in online networks

Co-chairs:
Caroline Haythornthwaite (Primary Contact)
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL, 61820, USA
Phone: +1-217-244-7453
Email: haythorn@uiuc.edu

Karine Barzilai-Nahon
The Information School
University of Washington
Mary Gates Hall, Room 370B, Box 352840, Seattle, WA 98195-2840, USA
Phone: +1-206-685-6668
Email: karineb@u.washington.edu

Paul Benjamin Lowry
Information Systems Department
Kevin Rollins Center for e-Business
Marriott School
Brigham Young University
573 Tanner Building, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Phone: +1-801-422-1215
Email:Paul.Lowry.PhD@gmail.com

Ian MacInnesAssociate Professor
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
324 Hinds HallSyracuse, NY 13244-4100, USA
Phone: +1-315-443-4101
Emai: IMacInne@syr.edu