Conference Theme: Cultural Crossroads
Netnocon26, our fourth annual conference, will take place in Izmir, Türkiye, a city long known as a meeting point of cultures, histories, and ideas. With more than 8,000 years of continuous settlement and a heritage shaped by dozens of civilizations, Izmir offers a meaningful location for our theme: Cultural Crossroads. It is a place where East and West, North and South, land and sea, tradition and modernity all join together. We invite researchers and practitioners who use netnography to join with us in exploring the cultural intersections that define contemporary digital life.
In 2026, we also mark thirty years since netnography was first introduced at the Association for Consumer Research conference in Tucson, Arizona. Since then, the method has evolved through the contributions of scholars around the world, across many disciplines and diverse contexts. It has been used to study a wide range of digital experiences and cultural expressions. This anniversary gives us a chance to reflect not only on where netnography has been, but also to contemplate where it is going and how we can continue to improve, question, and apply it in ways that are both rigorous and responsive to the ever-changing cultural condition of our world.
The 2026 theme of Cultural Crossroads highlights the diversity of cultural contexts that netnographers engage with. These include national cultures, family traditions, political ideologies, fan communities, spiritual worldviews, workplace practices, and artistic or expressive forms, among many others. We are particularly interested in the ways these cultures intersect with one another and with technocultural environments—the contexts that are continually shaped and reshaped by algorithms, platforms, devices, data, and global digital infrastructures. As Arjun Appadurai (1990) observed, culture today flows through overlapping “scapes”: mediascapes, technoscapes, ideoscapes, finanscapes, and ethnoscapes. Netnographic research can help us explore how these flows manifest in lived experience, interaction, meaning making, and identity.
Netnocon is a collaborative space where researchers come together to think, question, and share. The conference welcomes work at all stages of development and from all career levels. We encourage participation from across academic disciplines and geographic regions, and we welcome both empirical studies and conceptual or methodological contributions.
Netnocon 2026 reveal video
Our host city, Izmir, a city dating back 8 thousand 500 years with its natural beauties and unmatched potential, is the center of culture, art, tourism, and trade for Turkey. As being one of the fastest growing metropolitans in Europe, Izmir is also highly favored by international companies with its vast investment zones and high quality industry. Izmir, which is on the investment list of world renowned companies, is the rising star of Turkey with its hi-tech bases, logistics centers, and factories. Izmir is a dynamic and exquisite city not in terms of economy only, but in social and cultural aspects as well. Hosting 32 civilizations to date, and exquisite shades of blue and green embracing the 629 km coastline, Izmir is a radiant city with more than 300 days of sunshine a year. “Izmir is the most beautiful city created on earth” as described by the famous Greek historian and author Herodotus. Izmir has so much to offer.
Conference venue address:
Izmir University of Economics, Fevzi Çakmak, Sakarya Cd. No:156, 35330 Balçova/İzmir – see our travel guide
Netnography, as a research methodology, provides a rich toolkit for exploring various creative research, individual and collective creativity, and creative industries related themes in online and digital contexts. Topics of interest to the conference must include netnography, and can include, but are not limited to, the following:
Focused themes:
Topics of interest must include netnography, and may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Algorithmic culture and digital labor
- Consumer culture
- Corporate culture
- Cross-national and cross-cultural consumers (e.g., transborder shopping, expat and digital nomad cultures, consumer diasporas)
- Cultural diversity and inclusion
- Culture, identity, and community
- Cultures of care in (digital) health contexts
- Cultural, creative, gastronomy, roots/ancestry, spiritual, religious and medical tourism
- Cultural shifts, collective activism and consumer movements
- Custodians of cultures and traditions
- Digital religion and the negotiation of the sacred/profane
- Family dynamics and parenting cultures
- Global branding and marketing issues
- Influencer and creator culture
- International education and study abroad
- International/transnational netnography
- Intersections of culture and nature
- Migration, refuge and displacement
- Micro-, female, migrant and social entrepreneurship identities and culture
- Music, performance, and sound culture in netnography
- Netnographies of hybrid cultural rituals (e.g., weddings, funerals, celebrations across platforms)
- Netnographies of vernacular visual culture and digital aesthetics
- Netnography for cultural geography
- Netnography for cultural and media studies
- Netnography for philosophy, history, anthropology and archeology
- Netnography for religious studies
- Platform vernaculars and the localization of global digital cultures
- Political cultures and cultural politics
- Subcultural groups, consumer collectives, fandoms and cultural trends studied through netnography (e.g., vegans, breatharians, cruelty-free movements, animist groups, plastic-free movements, football fans, cottagecore, etc.)
- Technoculture
- Technospirituality, techno-animism, and speculative belief systems
- Youth cultures and their digital expressions
General netnography themes
- AI and netnography
- Auto-netnography
- Combining in-person ethnography and netnography
- Comparisons of digital research methodologies (e.g., netnography and online, virtual, and digital ethnography)
- Critical and feminist approaches to digital methodologies
- Embodied experiences and sensory netnography in digital contexts
- Ethics and privacy considerations in netnographic research
- Gender, race, and technocultural methodologies
- Humanist, transformative, post-humanist, animist, and more-than-human approaches to netnography
- Immersive netnography
- Immersion journals
- Influencer netnography
- Intersectional netnography
- Lead user analysis netnography
- Longitudinal netnography (long time spans)
- Metaverse and netnography
- Multimodal data and its analysis in netnography
- Netnographic studies of AI agents and digital assistants
- Netnographies of everyday digital infrastructures (e.g., payments, logistics, smart homes)
- Philosophical and epistemological bases of digital methodologies
- Reflexivity, positionality, and netnography
- Team netnography
We hope you’ll consider submitting your work to Netnocon 2026. As always, our goal is to foster an open, inclusive, and intellectually generous space, one where netnographers from around the world can share what they’ve discovered, learn from one another, and help build a stronger foundation for the next thirty years of digital cultural research.
Submission format
Authors are invited to submit either an abstract of up to 500 words (single-spaced, Times New Roman font 12, including a maximum of 5 keywords, at least 3 references, and up to one figure or table) or a paper of up to 10 pages (single-spaced, Times New Roman font 12, inclusive of references, figures and tables, abstract, and up to 5 keywords).
Submissions will be done through our Conference Submission System at https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/79531/submitter.
We accept submissions of alternative formats – video, audio, posters or any other form that we can access and view via a web browser without a need for specialist software. To facilitate an anonymous peer review process, you must ensure that your work can be accessed via a private link – you might offer a link and a username and password in your submission entry so that reviewers are able to view your work.
Submitted paper files can be up to 10 MB in size. The optional figures or tables file can also be up to 10 MB in size. References should be formatted according to APA style and submissions should follow the Inclusive Language Guide – https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines.
Please note that you can use AI tools in the preparation of your abstract/paper, but you are ultimately responsible for its contents. If non-existing references are found, we will exclude your submission from the conference.
Submissions need to be anonymized to allow for a double-blind review process. Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously or be under consideration for publication while being evaluated for this conference.
At least one author will have to register for the conference for accepted abstracts and papers to be included in the conference proceedings.
Special topic sessions
For the first time in the history of Netnocon, we will allow for the submission of curated special topic sessions. Special topic sessions have shorter presentations (10 minutes each) and more time for discussion. They can have a discussant rather than just a moderator. They can be seen as a way to initiate a journal special issue or edited book project or other form of collaboration, or to get more focused feedback. Special topic session organizers are responsible for deciding on a topic, recruiting participants, and ensuring that participants make an effort to attend the conference if the special topic session is accepted.
To organize a special topic session, you need to recruit 4 abstracts/papers that are either topic-wise or methodologically aligned. The abstracts/papers need to be submitted individually. The general formatting and submission guidelines apply. As part of the submission, you will be asked to indicate whether the abstract/paper is part of a special topic session and what the name of the special topic session is. Make sure all recruited participants indicate the same special topic session title. The contributions will be reviewed individually, with consideration of their contribution to the special topic session.
Journal special issue publication opportunity to promote your work
Please check the conference website in September for announcements regarding the special issue that will be affiliated with the conference.
Important Dates
- September 1, 2025: Paper submission site opens
- December 1, 2025: Paper submission site closes (deadline for abstract/paper submission)
- February 15, 2026: Reviews sent to authors and notification of abstract/paper acceptance
- February 15, 2026: Early bird conference registration begins
- March 4, 2026: Deadline for at least ONE author to register for the Conference
- April 18, 2026: Early bird conference registration ends
- May 14th, 2026: Registration closes
Netnocon 2026 Scientific Program Chairs:
- Prof. Robert Kozinets, University of Southern California
- Prof. Rossella Gambetti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
- Dr. Ulrike Gretzel, University of Southern California
- Assist. Prof. Lena Cavusoglu, Pacific University Oregon
We look forward to your creative contributions and to exploring netnography together in Izmir!