What is it about?
This inaugural issue of Volume 9 launches a new era for ACM Transactions on Social Computing — a premier journal dedicated to bridging computer science and social science. It introduces the new editorial leadership and showcases six groundbreaking papers that exemplify the journal’s mission: understanding how digital systems shape human behavior, and how social insights can improve technology. The issue is organized around two powerful themes: 1. Ethical and Participatory Research Design – How we study digital life with integrity, fairness, and user agency. 2. Computing Systems as Sites of Social Interaction – How platforms become arenas for identity, civic engagement, and cultural expression. From real-time experiments on social media algorithms to TikTok videos celebrating Black teen proms, from privacy attitudes in menopause data to detecting fake news in Bangla, these papers reveal how technology is not neutral — it’s deeply social, political, and human.
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Why is it important?
This issue marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of social computing as a field. As digital systems increasingly mediate our lives — from how we learn and work to how we protest and connect — we need research that is both technically rigorous and socially grounded. This issue demonstrates that the future of computing is not just about smarter algorithms, but about more responsible, equitable, and human-centered design. The papers show how: * Ethics can be built into research methods — not added as an afterthought. * Platform design shapes public discourse — from policy debates to cultural expression. * Low-resource languages and marginalized voices can be included in AI research — not left behind. * User agency and fairness are not just ideals — they can be measured, tested, and improved. With 6 papers per issue, 4 issues per year, and a global editorial board, TSC is committed to being a hub for interdisciplinary scholarship that matters — for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and the public. This issue is not just a collection of papers — it’s a manifesto for a new kind of computing: one that listens, learns, and evolves with society.
Perspectives
This issue feels like a beginning — not just of Volume 9, but of a new chapter in how we think about technology and society. As we launch this journal with a renewed editorial board, we're struck by how much the field has developed. We’re no longer just studying social media — we’re designing systems that respect users, analyze cultural meaning, and support civic life. The papers in this issue show that when computing and social science truly collaborate, the results are not just innovative — they’re transformative. We hope readers feel the same sense of possibility we do. I’ve spent years studying how algorithms shape public opinion. But this issue reminds me that the most powerful tools aren’t just in the code — they’re in the questions we ask, the methods we use, and the people we include. The fact that we can now run real-world experiments on social media feeds, or analyze TikTok videos through the lens of joy and identity, shows how far we’ve come. This issue proves that social computing isn’t just about data — it’s about dignity, equity, and meaning. I hope it inspires a new generation of researchers to ask bold, ethical questions. — New Editors-in-Chief, ACM Transactions on Social Computing
Xiaoming Fu
Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Volume 9, Issue 1 (2026): The Future of Social Computing — Ethics, Equity, and Impact, ACM Transactions on Social Computing, March 2026, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3803522.
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