#SMSociety Awards 2026

Congratulations to the winners and honorees of the 2026 International Conference on Social Media & Society Awards!

The award ceremony for the 2026 International Conference on Social Media & Society as held in the Glasgow University Union on the 15th July 2026.

Best Paper, Best Method Paper, and the Anatoliy Gruzd & Philip Mai #SMSociety Founders’ Emerging Scholar Award were selected by the Organising Committee from the pool of accepted papers, based on the peer-review scores and feedback.

The Best Poster award was selected by the conference attendees through a secret ballot, with ties decided based on the peer-review scores and feedback.

Thanks go to the community and attendees for your efforts reviewing papers, and to sponsors for the awards, communalytic.org, University of Exeter Press, Sage Publishing, and Edward Elgar Publishing.

Best Paper Award

This year, there were two winners of the Best Paper Award, with the organising committee rewarding both papers based on peer review and feedback.

Best Paper was award to Marie Heřmanová (University College London) with a paper titled Who gets to speak the truth? Russian invasion of Ukraine and construction of authenticity in social media communication

Read Extended Abstract (Paper 4C.3 – page 287)

Best Paper was also awarded to Chisom Omeokachie (independent researcher) with a paper titledSeeing Is No Longer Believing: Audience Trust, Scepticism, and AI-Generated Visuals on Social Media

Read Extended Abstract (Paper 1B.1 – page 38)

Best Methods Paper

Best Method Paper Award went to Matías Valderrama Barragán (University of Warwick) with a paper titled “The Social Life of the MSI Metric: Rationalities and Metrologies around “Meaningful Social Interactions” at Meta”

Read Extended Abstract (Paper 7F.1 – page 563)

Best Poster Award

The Best Poster Award is selected by the conference attendees through a secret ballot, with ties decided by peer review scores.

Best Poster Award went to Joelle Saunders (Independent Researcher) with a poster entitled Vine Compilations on YouTube: Social Media Archiving, Digital Nostalgia, and the Preservation of User-Generated Content

Read Extended Abstract (Paper 12.37 – page 1012)

Anatoliy Gruzd & Philip Mai #SMSociety Founders’ Emerging Scholar Award

The Anatoliy Gruzd & Philip Mai #SMSociety Founders’ Emerging Scholar Award was awarded to Carlos Entrena Serrano & Thomas A. Wright for a paper titled “TikTok… Are You Alright?!” Understanding the U.S. TikTok Ban and Forced Sale through Infrastructural Inversion

Read Extended Abstract (Paper 8E.2 – page 662)

Congratulations to all the winners!