In The Journal of Social Media (JSM), published by AOSIS, the scholarly domains and areas of inquiry span a wide range of disciplinary paradigms, approaches, and perspectives, ensuring a comprehensive and multidisciplinary focus. These domains are essential to capturing the complexity of social media as both a technological phenomenon and a socio-cultural force. JSM defines social media as an evolving ecosystem of platforms, technologies, and practices that shape how individuals, communities, and institutions communicate, connect, and participate in digitally networked life. Social media encompasses social networking sites, messaging applications, content-sharing tools, group-based digital networks, and decentralised or emerging systems. Crucially, social media includes the algorithmic, data-driven and AI-enabled infrastructures that mediate visibility, interaction, identity construction, and public discourse. Social media is understood here not as a fixed category, but as a fluid, interdisciplinary domain situated at the intersection of technology, society, and culture.

Historic data

This journal was created to address a gap in global academic publishing. Despite social media’s widespread influence, there is no dedicated journal for its comprehensive study. The founding editor saw this need after years of working in marketing, digital research, and higher education in the Global South. While there are numerous reputable journals that publish social media research, these publications are largely discipline-bound, rooted in communication or psychology, and often represent perspectives from the Global North. Existing outlets tend to treat social media either as a technological artefact or a communication channel, rather than as an evolving ecosystem with profound political, psychological, environmental, educational, and business implications. This journal was conceived in direct response to that gap. It is grounded in the belief that the study of social media requires an integrative, cross-disciplinary approach, and that scholarship from and about the Global South must be more than a token inclusion—it must shape the agenda. The journal is designed to provide an open-access, inclusive, and academically rigorous platform that supports diverse methodologies, embraces Southern epistemologies, and advances global conversations on digital life. Through this initiative, the journal offers not just an alternative to established publications, but a necessary evolution in the field of social media research.

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