Decentralization and New Technologies for Social Media

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, Online Social Media (OSM) represent the main communication channel in the real life of people.  Social Media are virtual worlds where people can communicate and share their personal information. However, the more importance they have, the more issues related to their usage arise. Privacy issues, like the famouse Cambridge Analytica Scandal, raise several questions concerning the storage of private data into these centralized social platforms. During the last few years, several proposals to overcome the privacy issues have been proposed, as well as the introduction of new paradigms. Decentralization, blockchain and other new important technologies have been considered in order to overcome the privacy issues of corrent OSM. However, OSM issues are more general and concern also fake news, (mis)information, and censorship. In particular, Decentralized Social Networks (DSONs) and Blockchain-based Social Media (BOSMs) represent today a valid alternative to the current OSMs.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect research contributions, applications, analyses, methodologies, or strategies that strengthen or face the management of Social Media issues, and the application of decentralized solutions and technologies in order to overcome the current limitations of social media. We hope that this Special Issue will contribute to raising awareness about new proposals and the impact of new technologies on the next generation of social media. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Social media analysis
• Decentralized solutions for social media
• Blockchain social media
• Blockchain technology applied to social media
• AI for social media
• Social media mining
• Privacy in social media
• Trust and reputation in social media
• Mobile networks for social applications
• Fake news and misinformation

Dr. Barbara Guidi
Guest Editor

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