Digital Behavior, Harms and Health at the Convergence of Technology: Gaming, Gambling and Social Media

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Behavioral Sciences exploring digital harms and health in the context of digital convergence. Digital convergence has been particularly noted in gaming and gambling, such as with the phenomenon of loot boxes (e.g., Zendle, & Bowden-Jones, 2019). However, this convergence has continued, creating further overlaps with social media, gaming, and gambling (Gainsbury et al., 2014). Examples of this include the emergence of social media gaming influencers promoting online gambling activities. This convergence has implications for digital behavior, health, and the safeguarding of users.

This Special Issue aims to create a collection of research papers to further our understanding of how digital convergence relates to specific behaviors, technologies, and activities, with a focus on gaming, gambling, and social media use.

We welcome submissions from the fields of social sciences, humanities, computer science, marketing, and human–computer interactions to understand digital behavior and outcomes more broadly. This includes research papers exploring addiction that map onto the topics in a way which adds to the relevant literature. 

We would encourage submissions from interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary approaches to advance understanding of some of the key issues, from researchers, policy makers, clinician/practitioners, relevant industry, and lived experience/affected others. We particularly encourage submissions from early career researchers.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas and topics within gaming, gambling, and social media may include (but are not limited to) the following: microtransactions (i.e., loot boxes), influencers, content creators, commerce/spending, digital harms, safeguarding, livestreaming, design features of technology, lived experience, media, and advertising.

Themes for submissions may include the following:

• Exploring definitions and concepts of digital behavior and/or harms and/or health;
• Behavioral outcomes, change, and interventions related to digital harms and health;
• Exploring digital convergence with gaming, and/or gambling and/or social media;
• Comparisons of convergence with gaming, and/or gambling and/or social media and other technologies and activities (i.e., bots and AI);
• Regulation and policy (implications to current, suggested changes, application of policies);
• Digital and technological designs related to convergence and/or behavioral outcomes, including dark design patterns;
• Digital behavior and/or harms and/or health in the context of social technical systems, health care and educational systems, or applications and comparisons in other contexts;
• The use of AI-enabled technologies to analyse digital data, such as web forums or social media platform content and interactions.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

References

Gainsbury, S. M., Hing, N., Delfabbro, P. H., & King, D. L. (2014). A taxonomy of gambling and casino games via social media and online technologies. International Gambling Studies, 14(2), 196–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/14459795.2014.890634

Zendle, D., & Bowden-Jones, H. (2019). Loot boxes and the convergence of video games and gambling. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(9), 724-725. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30285-8

Dr. Sarah E. Hodge
Prof. Dr. John McAlaney
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.