Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Trends in Social Multimedia Computing: Models, Methodologies, and Applications

Along with the fast development of high-speed networks and advanced wearable and intelligent devices, a large number of multimedia contents are now widely used by social networking sites and content-sharing services as information carriers for various applications [1]. The integration of multimedia and social media, which we call social multimedia, supports new types of user interaction. Motivated by the tremendous growth of social media applications, social computing has emerged as a novel computing paradigm that involves studying and managing social behavior and organizational dynamics to produce intelligent applications [2]. However, the wide prevalence of social multimedia poses a significant challenge for social computing because many new issues involving social activity and interaction around multimedia must be addressed in a media-specific manner. Nevertheless, multimedia research still remains open, given the challenging nature of the research focus in this area. Social multimedia can help improve existing multimedia applications, so the term social multimedia computing to denote the more focused multidisciplinary research and application field between social sciences and multimedia technology. In computational social system, multimedia plays a vital role in comfortable communication and social interaction, and providing valued data for analysis. It enhances user experience, supports diverse content sharing, and drives the development of social multimedia computing. This special issue unites pioneering studies that confront these challenges and chart new directions in social multimedia computing research from quantitative and/or computational perspective. The contributions span innovative models, algorithmic approaches, and emerging applications. This issue focuses on the technical and practical challenges faced in analyzing social media, user-generated content, and multimedia data. Understanding the role of multimedia in social contexts, maintaining data reliability, privacy, and security, and developing artificial intelligence (AI)-based solutions are the key goals in this direction. Together, they advance both the theoretical foundations and practical implementations of social multimedia computing, fostering richer human–machine symbioses and promoting enhanced social well being in multimedia contexts.