Introduction to the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society

This is an introduction to the Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society, an annual gathering of leading social media researchers from around the world. The conference is organized by the Social Media Lab (http://socialmedialab.ca) at Ryerson University. Now, in its 8th year, the 2017 conference in Toronto, Canada (July 28-30) features an intensive three-day program showcasing 24 double-blind peer reviewed full papers, 34 double-blind peer reviewed work-in-progress (WIP) papers, 8 workshops, 9 panels, and 36 posters. These papers were selected from research submitted by nearly 400 scholars from 43 countries and territories, working in many fields including Communications, Computer Science, Education, Journalism, Information, Management, Political Science, and Sociology. The Proceedings feature a total of 58 papers including both full and WIP papers.