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CFP || Global Media and China_Special Issue: Human-Machine Communication Culture: Artificial Intelligence, Media and Cultures in a Global Context
by Xiao Han 22 Apr '22

22 Apr '22

Global Media and China CFP (Follow us at: https://twitter.com/GCHjournal <https://twitter.com/GCHjournal>; https://www.facebook.com/Global-Media-and-China-110136464998539/ <https://www.facebook.com/Global-Media-and-China-110136464998539/>) Special Issue: Human-Machine Communication Cultures: Artificial Intelligence, Media and Cultures in a Global Context Guest Editors: Simone Natale, University of Turin, Italy, (simone.natale(a)unito.it <mailto:simone.natale@unito.it>) Deqiang Ji, Communication University of China, (jideqiang(a)cuc.edu.cn <mailto:jideqiang@cuc.edu.cn>jideqiang(a)cuc.edu <mailto:jideqiang@cuc.edu>.cn) Time Schedule: —31 July 2022: a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio, mentioning the title of the special issue in the subject line, to the guest editors: simone.natale(a)unito.it <mailto:simone.natale@unito.it> and jideqiang(a)cuc.edu.cn <mailto:jideqiang@cuc.edu.cn> —5 September 2022: authors of accepted authors will be notified —28 February 2023: full paper submission Overview: Traditionally, communication studies investigate the social, cultural and political dimensions of human communication, especially but not exclusively when mediated by technology. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) pose a new challenge to existing frameworks: technologies such as voice assistants, social media bots, and the application of automatic text generators to news media not only play the role of the channel through which communication is achieved, as in traditional definitions of the term medium (McLuhan, 1964), but also the role of the communicator (Natale, 2021) or moderator (Gillespie, 2018), since they are programmed to produce communicative messages directed at human interlocutors. The new area of inquiry called Human-Machine Communication emerged in response to this challenge, with the objective to apply to communications between humans and machines the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools originally developed in communication and media studies to examine communications between humans (Guzman & Lewis, 2019; Gunkel, 2020). Human-machine communication, however, is still often declined in the singular form. Too little consideration is given to the fact that communication is always situated in specific cultural, linguistic and national environments, which in turn inform the situations and outcomes of all communication processes (Gunaratne, 2010; Xiangzhong, 2016). This special issue of Global Media and China aims to contribute to existing efforts (e.g. Lawrence, 2021; Komarraju et al., 2021) to fill this gap. Contributions are invited that examine and enlighten the plurality of human-machine communication cultures, both at a diachronic (i.e. historically across time) and at a synchronic (i.e. geographically across different areas of the globe, including but not limited to China) level. As a whole, the special issue will show that if we want to understand the impact of AI technologies in the contemporary world, we need to better situate the cultural and social dynamics that contribute to shape the meanings and the pragmatic outcomes of these technologies for human societies across the globe. We encourage submission of essays that illustrate the above-mentioned dynamics with specific cases/ examples/ empirical studies. We are especially interested in research based within the broad remits of communication and media studies, but interdisciplinary collaborations that highlight the relationships with other areas are also encouraged. Selected articles will address questions such as: · How do different linguistic, cultural and national dimensions impact on the functioning and outcome of AI technologies? · How can we better understand the plurality of algorithmic imaginaries and human-machine communication cultures in a global world? · How does AI and human-machine communication change global media industries around the world? How do they affect specific media sectors, such as journalism, computer games, social media, film and broadcasting? · How are technologies such as AI and robots domesticated in different cultural environments? · How do human-machine communication cultures change across time, both in the history of AI and in the longer history of media technologies? · How can the scope of human-machine communication research be enlarged to encompass wider historical trajectories and geographical boundaries? References Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet : platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press. Gunaratne, S. A. (2010). De-Westernizing communication/social science research: Opportunities and limitations. Media, Culture & Society, 32(3), 473-500. Gunkel, D. J. (2020). An Introduction to Communication and Artificial Intelligence. Polity. Guzman, A. L., & Lewis, S. C. (2019). Artificial intelligence and communication: A Human–Machine Communication research agenda. New Media & Society, 22(1), 70–86. Komarraju, S. A., Arora, P., & Raman, U. (2021). Agency and servitude in platform labour: A feminist analysis of blended cultures. Media, Culture & Society, published online before print 10 July 2021, doi: 10.1177/01634437211029890 Lawrence, H. M. (2021). Siri Disciplines. In T. S. Mullaney, B. Peters, M. Hicks, & K. Philip (Eds.), Your computer is on fire. MIT Press. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. McGraw-Hill. Natale, S. (2021). Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test. Oxford University Press. Xiangzhong, L. (2016). New hope, new global media and China. Global Media and China, 1(1-2), 5-6. Dr HAN Xiao Research Associate, State Key Lab of Media Convergence and Communication, Communication University of China (CUC) Commissioning Editor, Global Media and China http://journals.sagepub.com/home/gch <http://gch.sagepub.com/>

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AoIR2022 review deadline
by Kylie Jarrett 22 Apr '22

22 Apr '22

Hi everyone, Just a final reminder that the reviews of the AoIR2022 conference abstracts are due in by the end of today. There's still a lot of outstanding reviews so please do get to them today. Thanks, Dr. Kylie Jarrett AoIR2022 Programme Chair Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) Department of Media Studies Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare Ireland Author: Feminism, Labour, and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife Co-author: NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media Google and the Culture of Search

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Online Summer School on Digital Technologies and the Environment
by Adi Kuntsman 21 Apr '22

21 Apr '22

**Digital Politics Summer School: Digital Technologies and the Environment** What are the environmental impacts of and conditions for digital technologies or digitization practices more generally? What constitutes the relation between digital technologies and the environment? Whether and how is the relation maintained, disrupted, repaired and reconfigured? What are its temporalities? What are the ethical and political implications of reconsidering the relation between digital technologies and the environment? And what are the methodological and epistemological challenges of doing so? The School will explore the relations between digital technologies and environmental concerns, covering topics of digital waste, digital toxicity, e-waste, communication infrastructures, and smart cities, in a series of on-line Masterclasses with Alenda Chang, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup , Rahul Mukherjee, Liu Xin and Adi Kuntsman. Registered participants will also be invited to attend a pre-School keynote by Benedetta Brevini, the author of “Is AI Good for the Planet”, on June the 10th. Please check the link below for further details and registration. Masterclasses are kept intentionally small, early registration is recommended. https://digitalpoliticsmanmet.bloggi.co/digital-politics-summer-school-digi… Dr Adi Kuntsman, Reader in Digital Politics Programme Leader, MA in International Relations and Global Communications and MSc in Digital Society Coordinator, PhD pathway in Digital Politics Department of Politics | Manchester Metropolitan University Geoffrey Manton Building| Manchester | M15 6LL| Web | Online office hours (term time only): Tuesday 3-4pm or by appointment- please email to arrange Digital Politics Blog

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8th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2 2022): Fourth Call for Contributions
by Announce Announcements 21 Apr '22

21 Apr '22

*** Fourth Call for Contributions *** 8th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2 2022) "Community Smartification and towards ZERO emission Smart Cities for a Green New Era" September 26-29, 2022, Aliathon Resort, Paphos, Cyprus https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022 The Call-for-Contributions for the 8th IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2 2022) is OPEN! The IEEE ISC2 2022 Organizing Committee is glad to announce that it is currently accepting papers for the 8th edition of the IEEE International Smart Cities Conference. This year, the IEEE ISC2 will be held in-person on September 26-29, 2022, in Paphos, Cyprus and the theme of the conference is “Community Smartification and towards ZERO emission Smart Cities for a Green New Era.” The IEEE ISC2 is the flagship conference sponsored by the IEEE Smart Cities Technical Community, a coalition of eight IEEE technical societies and organizations. Besides contributions addressing the conference theme, authors are welcome to submit their original research results in traditional topics across broad application and functional domains, within the context of smart urban infrastructure systems. The technical areas include, but are not limited to: • Smart city theory, modelling and simulation  • Intelligent infrastructure • Sensors and actuators • Open data and big data analytics • AI powered smart cities services • Safety and security systems • Smart healthcare • Smart emergency management • IoT and Smart X services • Data security and privacy • Connected Vehicle (CV) technologies • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) • Smart mobility and transportation • Smart energy systems • Smart buildings and Smart grid • Digital city and smart growth • Smart traffic system operations • Environmental monitoring technologies The complete list of technical areas can be found here: https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/call-for-papers/ . Should you need further clarifications or have any inquiries, please do not hesitate to contact us at: isc22022(a)easychair.org . Paper Submission Guidelines Prospective authors are invited to submit high quality original (Full or Short) papers via the EasyChair submission site at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=isc22022 . Full papers should describe novel research contributions with evaluation results and are limited to seven (7) pages. Short papers, limited in length to four (4) pages, should be more visionary in nature and are meant to discuss new challenges and visions, highlight early research results, and explore novel research directions. All submitted papers must be unpublished and not considered elsewhere for publication, should be written in English and formatted according to the IEEE Template ( https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html ). Each submitted paper will pass through the standard IEEE peer-review process. If accepted and presented at the conference, it will appear in the conference proceedings and be submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The conference organisers are currently negotiating a number of special issues with high quality journals. More information is available on the conference web site (https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/journal-special-issues/ ). The best papers will be awarded in the conference Best Paper Award and a Best Student Paper Award contests. For more information, please visit the conference website: https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022 . Special Sessions Proposals Please refer to the web site for further details: https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/call-for-special-sessions/ . Workshops Proposals Please refer to the web site for further details: https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/call-for-workshop-proposals/ . Tutorials Proposals Please refer to the web site for further details: https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/call-for-tutorial-proposals/ . Sponsorship Opportunities Please refer to the web site for further details: https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/sponsorships/ . Important Dates • Conference Paper Submission Deadline: May 15, 2022 • Conference Acceptance Notification: July 15, 2022 • Conference Camera-ready Deadline: July 31, 2022 • Special Sessions and Workshops Proposals Submission Deadline: April 25, 2022 • Special Sessions and Workshops Proposals Selection: April 29, 2022 • Tutorial Proposals Submission Deadline: May 27, 2022 • Tutorial Proposals Selection: June 3, 2022 • Conference Dates: September 26-29, 2022 Organizing Committee https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/chairs/ Special Track Chairs Committee https://attend.ieee.org/isc2-2022/special-tracks-committee2/ IEEE Smart Cities https://smartcities.ieee.org

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New open access book: Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Brazil (UCL Press)
by Coughlin, Margie 21 Apr '22

21 Apr '22

*** We apologise for any cross-posting*** UCL Press is delighted to announce the publication of a new open access book that may be of interest to list subscribers: Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Brazil, by Marília Duque. Download it free: https://bit.ly/3JTh3xF ******************************************* Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Brazil By Marília Duque. Free download: https://bit.ly/3JTh3xF ******************************************* With people living longer all over the world, ageing has been framed as a socio-economic problem. In Brazil, older people are expected to remain healthy and autonomous while actively participating in society. Based on ethnographic research in São Paulo, Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Brazil shows how older people in a middle-class neighbourhood conciliate these expectations with the freedom and pleasures reserved for the Third Age. Work is what bonds this community together, providing a sense of dignity and citizenship. Smartphones have become of great importance to the residents as they search for and engage in new forms of work and hobbies. Connected by a digital network, they work as content curators, sharing activities that fill their schedule. Managing multiple WhatsApp groups is a job in itself, as well as a source of solidarity and hope. Friendship groups help each to download new apps, search for medical information and guidance, and navigate the city. Together, they are reinventing themselves as volunteers, entrepreneurs and influencers, or they are finding a new interest that gives their later life a purpose. The smartphone, which enables the residents to share and discuss their busy lives, is also helping them, and us, to rethink the very representation of ageing. Free download: https://bit.ly/3JTh3xF ---------------------- uclpress.co.uk | @uclpress

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PhD studentship @ Sheffield: Trust and inequalities in the context of data-driven media
by Helen Kennedy 21 Apr '22

21 Apr '22

Dear list members Excellent MA students may be interested in this opportunity. Best wishes Helen --- PhD studentship: Trust and inequalities in the context of data-driven media (part of the Designing For All <https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2022-03-phd-research-fund-public-service-digi…> cohort) Deadline: 11 May 2022 Applications should be submitted to the University of Sheffield Postgraduate Online Application system https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/phd/apply. The University of Sheffield and BBC R&D are offering a 4-year full-time EPSRC/BBC-funded PhD studentship, to start in October 2022. The successful applicant will research the challenge of delivering equitable provision of future media in the context of growing digital inequalities. Data-centric technologies, including AI, are at the centre of the BBC technology and innovation plan and will transform audiences’ experiences in the future. However, not everyone has equal access, or the same capability to engage and to benefit, and people who are excluded are often already experiencing social, cultural and economic marginalisation. As part of the BBC’s commitment to universality, this PhD will contribute to understanding digital inclusion in a data-driven society, through empirical research into underserved audiences’ experiences of and trust in data-driven media and what good data uses look like for them. The student will be supervised by Professor Helen Kennedy ( h.kennedy(a)sheffield.ac.uk) at the University of Sheffield and Dr Rhianne Jones (Rhia.Jones(a)bbc.co.uk) from BBC R&D (with bases in Salford’s Media City and Central London). The studentship is part of a wider multidisciplinary cohort of four industrial PhD projects: *Designing for All*. The student will have the opportunity to conduct research at the BBC, and to collaborate with the other students in the cohort. Information about the *Designing For All* programme can be found in this BBC R&D blogpost <https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2022-03-phd-research-fund-public-service-digi…>. *The Person* This is a multidisciplinary research challenge, and we are keen to receive applications from people from Sociology, Media & Communications, HCI, Information Studies, Politics or related disciplines or with relevant professional experience, and with interests in one or more of the following: ● digital media; social and digital inequalities; digital inclusion; data-driven technologies; value-sensitive design; responsive innovation; public service media ● qualitative methods; co-production; participatory design; deliberative inquiry; speculative design; prototyping. The successful applicant should have a first class or high upper second class honours degree and preferably a Masters qualification or comparable professional experience. A key aim of this cohort-based studentship is to develop future research leaders, with experience of working in multidisciplinary teams and across academic and industry contexts. Candidates should expect to learn new, cross-disciplinary skills, including those related to empirical research design, data science/analysis and cutting-edge technology. *How to Apply* Applications should be submitted to the University of Sheffield Postgraduate Online Application system https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/phd/apply. Applications should be accompanied by 1. A CV, certified copies of degree certificates and transcripts, details of two referees and proof of eligibility (e.g. a copy of your passport/ residence permit) 2. A personal statement of no more than two pages describing: a) your research interests, a central question for this project and an indicative methodology; b) your experience to date that makes you suitable for this studentship, and what you would learn through this opportunity; and c) the impact you hope to make through working with us on this project. Applicants applying for more than one of the ‘*Designing for All’ *studentships should indicate this in their personal statement. For queries about the application process, please contact scs-pgr(a)sheffield.ac.uk. Interviews will take place in May 2022. -- Helen Kennedy, she/her, Professor of Digital Society, @hmtk, Living With Data <https://livingwithdata.org/> *RECENT PUBLICATIONS: * Context and prior awareness matter in public concern about data uses <https://livingwithdata.org/resources/living-with-data-survey-results/> (2021, w/Mark Taylor, Susan Oman, Jo Bates, Itzelle Medina-Perea, Hannah Ditchfield, Lulu Pinney) Public perceptions of good data management: findings from a UK-based survey <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720935616>, *Big Data and Society* (2020, w/Todd Hartman, Robin Steedman & Rhia Jones) *Data Visualization in Society <https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463722902/data-visualization-in-society>* (2020, ed w/ Martin Engebretesen, Open Access with Amsterdam University Press)

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Call for Applications: Institute for Rebooting Social Media Assembly Fellowship at Harvard Berkman Klein Center
by Joanne Cheung 20 Apr '22

20 Apr '22

Dear all, The Institute for Rebooting Social Media <https://rebootingsocialmedia.org/> at Harvard Berkman Klein Center recently launched a call for Assembly Fellows. This funded fellowship (Oct 2022-Apr 2023) will convene practitioners from all domains (e.g. policy, engineering, and social activism) to build tangible prototypes that demonstrate what a healthy online information ecosystem could be. The RSM Assembly Fellows will be in community with the RSM Visiting Scholars <https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2022-04/inaugural-cohort-visiting-scholars-…>, putting theory and applied research in dialogue. If this is something you’re interested in, or if you know people who might be a good fit for the Assembly Fellowship, here is the application page <https://cyber.harvard.edu/apply/jobs/38?admin_view=true&apptracker_id=24>. Please help us spread the word! Thank you so much! Joanne Cheung (on behalf of the RSM team) — joannekcheung.com

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MIT CFP deadline reminder - Games and Covid
by Piotr Siuda 20 Apr '22

20 Apr '22

Fellow AOiR Member, this is just to remind you that the deadline for submitting a chapter's extended abstract for collection "Gaming and Gamers in Times of Pandemic" is May 1. You can find the Timeframe and Submission Procedure below. The editors of this CfP are already in discussion with the MIT Press GAME HISTORIES SERIES editors who enthusiastically voiced support for the collection. The website of the series: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/game-histories The Covid-19 pandemic is a historical moment with social, cultural, and economic repercussions and unprecedented government responses. The pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of our lives regardless of where we live. This volume seeks to examine the impact of this epochal and significant period and resulting government policies, especially the lockdowns, on one particular cultural sphere: games. In the initial months, many industry reports noted the unexpected positive impact on online digital game sales. Games weren’t just lockdown-proof, but boosted by lockdowns: stay-at-home orders triggered a rush toward games as an alternative form of entertainment, and the ubiquity of mobile phones allowed wider than ever participation. This was seen in esports as it was a successful “extension” of traditional sports, and it forced immediate brand innovation and far-reaching changes in marketing strategies. On the other hand, the growth in esports online viewership came with a price, as many local arena events had to be canceled. However, sales growth and marketing aside, the impact on the game industry overall was more complex and often pernicious. Game developers experienced a rapid and often challenging shift to remote work. This shift towards virtual communication also affected universities, where students could no longer be hosted in campus laboratories, requiring new forms of student engagement. Some digital games encountered unexpected challenges: how indeed to adapt a location-based augmented reality game to a locked-down world? Equally complex was the impact on non-digital games. Typically designed for direct face-to-face contact, board games, pen & paper role-playing games, and even live-action role-playing games and their players were forced to move online, or to employ complex safety protocols to minimize transmission risk and conform to legal requirements. With the manufacturing and shipping chain of board game components being drastically distorted, the market for board games has undergone a dramatic change. Also, the virtual market management concept overtook a fair share of the market, with the leading role of crowdfunding specialists. Large scale events were canceled, postponed, downsized, or virtualized. The same, indeed, was the case not only for game-playing events but also for industry and academic conferences. The pandemic also affected game players, game developers, game journalists, and game scholars alike in many other ways, starting with the most direct – illness, and sometimes death. New cultural rifts also opened up due to political tensions. Some effects are temporary: others are here to stay. All deserve to be studied. In this volume, we invite authors to reflect on the various impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on gaming, gamers, as well as those who make and study games. The volume encourages, but is not limited to, the following topics: Digital and non-digital games in the pandemic Visions of Covid-19 and other pandemics in games Pandemic impact on the game industry and game-related events Will the pandemic accelerate the evolution of the game industry (games as a social platform, expansion of the free-to-play model, mobile leading the industry, etc.) The pandemic and esports (e.g. growth and virtualization of esports, ongoing relations between traditional sports and esports) Pandemic impact on game culture and gamer communities Teaching and developing games in the pandemic AR and VR Games and VR in the service of education online Games and players’ well-being (games as tools for therapy and the improvement of anxiety vs. excessive use, abuse, and possible addiction) Ludology in the time of the pandemic Serious games developed for and around the pandemic Digitalization of board games and LARPs TIMELINE *Deadline for Initial Proposals (Extended Abstracts): May 1, 2022* Notification of Acceptance: June 1, 2022 First Drafts Due: October 1, 2022 Editor Comments: November 1, 2022 Final Drafts Due: January 1, 2023 Please note that the dates of “Notification of Acceptance”; “First Drafts Due”; “Editor Comments”; “Final Drafts Due” may change due to the publishing process – the authors will be informed in case of any changes happening. *SUBMISSION PROCEDURE* Prospective authors should submit a short chapter proposal as a Word document to games.covid.book(a)gmail.com. The proposal should contain: The name and contact information of the author(s), along with a brief bio The title of the proposed chapter Extended abstract of approximately 1000-1200 words excluding references. The abstract should indicate the consistency, rigor, and relevance of the work. Paper submissions should articulate the issue or research question to be discussed, the methodological or critical framework used, and indicate the findings or conclusions and/or the relevance to general volume. Papers can present any kind of research, analysis, or theoretical framing, but should be written so that the importance of the work can be indicated. Please note that empirical chapters should include the research question and data to be analyzed. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Please use the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. The editors strongly recommend that authors follow the Chicago Manual. Please note that chapters not adhering to the guidelines will be returned to the author(s) for revision. EDITORS Piotr Siuda (Primary Contact) Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz piotr.siuda(a)gmail.com Jakub Majewski Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz jakubm(a)ukw.edu.pl Krzysztof Chmielewski Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz k.shaman(a)ukw.edu.pl Piotr Siuda (PhD) is a media studies scholar, Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Communication and Media at the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Member of The Association of Internet Researchers and the Polish Society for Social Communication. http://piotrsiuda.com Jakub Majewski (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. His research interests include role-playing games and cultural heritage, game storytelling techniques, game industry history, among others. He is also a game developer with two decades' worth of experience and a portfolio of about forty diverse games. Krzysztof Chmielewski (MA) is a Senior Lecturer of Game Design at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. LARP researcher and game designer and producer of games for different platforms (PC/mobile/AR, board/card, live games, gamebooks). R&D specialist in experiential learning and gaming solutions.F -- *Piotr Siuda* (PhD, Professor of Media Studies) piotrsiuda.com Institute of Social Communication and Media Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland *Recent papers:* *--** Microtransaction politics in FIFA Ultimate Team: game fans, Twitch streamers, and Electronic Art*, in*: **EA Sports FIFA: Feeling the Game, Bloomsbury Academic Press*. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ea-sports-fifa-9781501375347 *-- **Cancer entertainment education and Netflix – an exploratory study, **Educational Media International**, *59(1), doi: http://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2022.2054115 *-- Sports gamers practices as a form of subversiveness - the example of the FIFA ultimate team*, *Critical Studies in Media Communication*, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2021.1876897

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Call for Papers and Shared Task Participation (CASE @ EMNLP 2022): Challenges and Applications of Automated Extraction of Socio-political Events from Text
by ali hürriyetoglu 20 Apr '22

20 Apr '22

Call for Papers and Shared Task Participation (CASE @ EMNLP 2022): Challenges and Applications of Automated Extraction of Socio-political Events from Text ************************************************************************************ URL: https://emw.ku.edu.tr/case-2022/ September 7, 2022: Submission deadline on Softconf August 15, 2022: Latest ARR submission deadline for ARR October 2, 2022: Latest ARR commitment deadline October 9, 2022: Notification of Acceptance October 16, 2022: Camera-ready papers due Workshop dates: December 7-8, 2021 Location: Hybrid -> Abu Dhabi & Online Please see below for the important dates of the shared tasks. There are two options for submissions that are i) Softconf page of the workshop: https:// <https://www.softconf.com/m/icspcc2022> softconf.com/emnlp2022/case2022 and ii) ACL Rolling review (ARR): https://aclrollingreview.org/dates. ************************************************************************************ Nowadays, the unprecedented quantity of easily accessible data on social, political, and economic processes offers ground-breaking potential in guiding data-driven analysis in social and human sciences and in driving informed policy-making processes. Governments, multilateral organizations, and local and global NGOs present an increasing demand for high-quality information about a wide variety of events ranging from political violence, environmental catastrophes, and conflict, to international economic and health crises (Coleman et al. 2014; Porta and Diani, 2015) to prevent or resolve conflicts, provide relief for those that are afflicted, or improve the lives of and protect citizens in a variety of ways. Black Lives Matter protests (http://protestmap.raceandpolicing.com) and conflicts in Syria ( https://www.cartercenter.org/peace/conflict_resolution/syria-conflict-resol…) are only two examples where we must understand, analyze, and improve real-life situations using such data. Finally, these efforts respond to “growing public interest in up-to-date information on crowds” as well ( https://sites.google.com/view/crowdcountingconsortium/faqs) Event extraction has long been a challenge for the natural language processing (NLP) community as it requires sophisticated methods in defining event ontologies, creating language resources, domain specific grammars, developing Machine Learning models and other algorithmic approaches for various event-detection- specific tasks, such entity detection, semantic labeling, event classification and clustering and others (Pustojevsky et al. 2003; Boroş, 2018; Chen et al. 2021). Social and political scientists have been working to create socio-political event (SPE) databases such as ACLED, EMBERS, GDELT, ICEWS, MMAD, PHOENIX, POLDEM, SPEED, TERRIER, and UCDP following similar steps for decades. These projects and the new ones increasingly rely on machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and NLP methods to deal better with the vast amount and variety of data in this domain (Hürriyetoğlu et al. 2020). Unfortunately, automated approaches suffer from major issues like bias, limited generalizability, class imbalance, training data limitations, and ethical issues that have the potential to affect the results and their use drastically (Lau and Baldwin 2020; Bhatia et al. 2020; Chang et al. 2019). Moreover, the results of the automated systems for SPE information collection have neither been comparable to each other nor been of sufficient quality (Wang et al. 2016; Schrodt 2020). SPEs are varied and nuanced. Both the political context and the local language used may affect whether and how they are reported. We invite contributions from researchers in computer science, NLP, ML, DL, AI, socio-political sciences, conflict analysis and forecasting, peace studies, as well as computational social science scholars involved in the collection and utilization of SPE data. Academic workshops specific to tackling event information in general or for analyzing text in specific domains such as health, law, finance, and biomedical sciences have significantly accelerated progress in these topics and fields, respectively. However, there has not been a comparable effort for handling SPEs. We fill this gap. We invite work on all aspects of automated coding and analysis of SPEs and events in general from mono- or multi-lingual text sources. This includes (but is not limited to) the following topics 1) Extracting events in and beyond a sentence, event coreference resolution, 2) New datasets, training data collection, and annotation for event information, 3) Event-event relations, e.g., subevents, main events, causal relations, 4) Event dataset evaluation in light of reliability and validity metrics, 5) Defining, populating, and facilitating event schemas and ontologies, 6) Automated tools and pipelines for event collection related tasks, 7) Lexical, syntactic, discursive, and pragmatic aspects of event manifestation, 8) Methodologies for development, evaluation, and analysis of event datasets, 9) Applications of event databases, e.g. early warning, conflict prediction, policymaking, 10) Estimating what is missing in event datasets using internal and external information, 11) Detection of new SPE types, e.g. creative protests, cyberactivism, COVID19 related, 12) Release of new event datasets, 13) Bias and fairness of the sources and event datasets, 14) Ethics, misinformation, privacy, and fairness concerns pertaining to event datasets, and 15) Copyright issues on event dataset creation, dissemination, and sharing. 16) We encourage submissions of new system description papers on our available benchmarks (ProtestNews @ CLEF 2019, AESPEN @ LREC 2020, and CASE @ 2021). Please contact the organizers if you would like to access the data. The proceedings of the previous editions should be indicative of what we cover: ProtestNews @ CLEF 2019 (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2380/) AESPEN @ ACL 2020 (https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2020.aespen-1/) CASE @ ACL-IJCNLP 2021 (https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2021.case-1/) **** Shared tasks **** Task 1- Multilingual protest news detection: This is the same shared task organized at CASE 2021 (For more info: https://aclanthology.org/2021.case-1.11/) But this time there will be additional data and languages at the evaluation stage. Contact person: Ali Hürriyetoğlu (ali.hurriyetoglu(a)gmail.com) Github: https://github.com/emerging-welfare/case-2022-multilingual-event Task 2- Automatically replicating manually created event datasets: The participants of Task 1 will be invited to run the systems they will develop to tackle Task 1 on a news archive (For more info https://aclanthology.org/2021.case-1.27/) Contact person: Hristo Tanev ( htanev(a)gmail.com) Github: https://github.com/emerging-welfare/case-2022-multilingual-event Task 3- Event causality identification: Causality is a core cognitive concept and appears in many natural language processing (NLP) works that aim to tackle inference and understanding. We are interested to study event causality in news, and therefore, introduce the Causal News Corpus. The Causal News Corpus consists of 3,559 event sentences, extracted from protest event news, that have been annotated with sequence labels on whether it contains causal relations or not. Subsequently, causal sentences are also annotated with Cause, Effect, and Signal spans. Our two subtasks (Sequence Classification and Span Detection) work on the Causal News Corpus, and we hope that accurate, automated solutions may be proposed for the detection and extraction of causal events in news. Contact person: Fiona Anting Tan (tan.f(a)u.nus.edu) Github: https://github.com/tanfiona/CausalNewsCorpus Please follow the workshop page for the updates or contact the contact person related to the task you are interested in. The important dates for the tasks are i) Training and validation data available: April 15, 2022, ii) Validation labels and test data available: August 01, 2022, iii) Test period: August 01-15, 2022. *** Keynotes *** Three prominent scholars have accepted our invitation as keynote speakers: i) J. Craig Jenkins (https://sociology.osu.edu/people/jenkins.12) is Academy Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Ohio State University. He directed the Mershon Center for International Security Studies from 2011 to 2015 and is now senior research scientist. ii) Scott Althaus (https://pol.illinois.edu/directory/profile/salthaus) is Merriam Professor of Political Science, Professor of Communication, and Director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. iii) Thien Huu Nguyen (https://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~thien/) is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Oregon. Thien is the director of the NSF IUCRC Center for Big Learning (CBL) at the University of Oregon. **** Submissions ***** This call solicits short and long papers reporting original and unpublished research on the topics listed above. The papers should emphasize obtained results rather than intended work and should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. The page limits and content structure announced at ACL ARR page (https://aclrollingreview.org/cfp) should be followed for both short and long papers. Papers should be submitted on the START page of the workshop ( http://softconf.com/emnlp2022/case2022) or on ARR page (TBA on the workshop website) in PDF format, in compliance with the ACL publication author guidelines for ACL publications https://acl-org.github.io/ACLPUB/formatting.html The reviewing process will be double-blind and papers should not include the author's names and affiliations. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. The workshop proceedings will be published on ACL Anthology. **** Organization Committee **** Ali Hürriyetoğlu (KNAW Humanities Cluster DHLab, the Netherlands) Hristo Tanev (Joint Research Centre (JRC), European Commission, Italy) Vanni Zavarella (Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, Italy) Reyyan Yeniterzi (Sabancı University, Turkey) Erdem Yörük (Koc University, Turkey) Osman Mutlu (Koc University, Turkey) Fırat Duruşan (Koc University, Turkey) Ali Safaya (Koc University, Turkey) Bharathi Raja Asoka Chakravarthi (Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics, United Kingdom), Benjamin J. Radford (UNC Charlotte, United States) Francielle Vargas (University of São Paulo, Brazil) Farhana Ferdousi Liza (University of East Anglia, UK) Milena Slavcheva (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria), Ritesh Kumar (Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, India), Daniela Cialfi (The ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University, Italy) Tiancheng Hu (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) Niklas Stoehr (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) Fiona Anting Tan (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

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Nancy Baym Annual Book Award nomination deadline is 1 May 202
by Michelle, Association of Internet Researchers 20 Apr '22

20 Apr '22

*The deadline for the Nancy Baym Annual Book Award nominations is 1 May 2022.* This award recognizes the best scholarship of the Association of Internet Researchers, and highlights the breadth of work relating to the social and cultural dimensions of networked media. To be eligible for the award: - The book must be authored or co-authored as a monograph and must explore a single topic (edited collections are not eligible). - All of the book’s authors must be current members of AoIR at the time of submission (May 1, 2022). Memberships may be purchased here https://members.aoir.org/. - The book must have been published between January 1 and December 31, 2021. The books will be reviewed by a committee of Robert W. Gehl-Louisiana Tech University (Chair), Nancy Baym-Microsoft Research, Jakob Linaa Jensen-Aarhus University, Jun Liu-University of Copenhagen, Bjorn Nansen-The University of Melbourne, Robert Tynes-Bard College, Arantxa Vizcaino Verdu-University of Huelva, and Weiyu Zhang-National University of Singapore. Each book should be accompanied by an emailed letter of nomination. Self-nominations from AoIR members are welcome. The letter of nomination, which must be written by a current member of AoIR, should outline: How the book contributes to AoIR’s intellectual community. - The book’s unique contributions and overall strengths. - If not a self-nomination, the letter should also include a statement that the nominated author has been contacted prior to its submission and accepts the nomination. - Books submitted without a meaningful nomination letter outlining both the strengths of the book and the book’s contribution to the AoIR community to AoIR will not be eligible. We are happy to accept books in either digital or hard copy. If digital, please send pdf to bookaward [at] aoir.org or contact for individual email addresses. Additional nomination details available here: https://aoir.org/2022bookaward/

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