SAGE to launch new Open Access Journal, Social Media + Society

Leading independent academic and independent publisher SAGE is delighted to announce the launch of its new Open Access (OA) journal, Social Media + Society.

Social media has been a key development of our modern day culture, and its impact on and its dimensions within socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions in societies past, contemporary and future, is a growing and key field of academic research.  Social Media + Society presents a unique collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to the development of the academic field of enquiry. A fully OA, peer-reviewed scholarly journal, it is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The first articles will be published in early 2015.

Speaking of the launch, Karen Phillips, Editorial Director, SAGE commented:

“Since our founding 50 years ago this year SAGE has championed and supported new emerging disciplines and cutting edge research. The launch of our new OA journal Social Media & Society continues this mission and commitment and is a launch that we are extremely excited about. Social media has been one of the key developments in communication in the 2000’s, and as such has become a key forum for academic debate around its increasing impact on society and behaviour.  Supporting this increasing line of academic enquiry, with this new journal we are aiming to provide an innovative OA research forum to increase academic engagement with and questioning of this emerging discipline.”

The journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Zizi Papacharissi, Professor and Head of the Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago further commented that:

“With this journal we hope to move beyond conventional understandings of social media to deeper appreciation of what it is that makes media social. Platforms come and go, but our lasting connection with media helps us tell stories about who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be.  Recognizing that social media are as old as communication itself, the editorial scope of the journal includes and extends beyond contemporary trends to invite scholarship that broadly studies media as social entities, environments, and architectures.”

More information on the journal can be found here.

Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. Publishing interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, the journal reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, endorsing mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies.