Dear colleagues, Please consider submitting to workshops organized in conjunction with INSCI’2018 in St.Petersburg, Russia, on October 26, 2018. A volume of joint post-proceedings for the workshops will be published by Springer International Publishing. The book series for our proceedings is Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). For submission instructions, see insci2018.org/workshops The early-bird participation fee without publication is 40 euro (regular – 60 euro), with publication – 100 euro (regular – 120 euro). This includes participation in the INSCI two-day conference and the workshop session. (1) Detecting Social Problems in Online Content: An Interdisciplinary Workshop Organizers: Olessia Koltsova, National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Svetlana Bodrunova, St.Petersburg State University The workshop is dedicated to discussing the newest approaches to detecting a broad range of social issues in online content, from inequalities expressed in texts (hate speech, prejudice, divisive / uncivil messages, political bias and racism etc.), to social polarization based on user views and sentiment, to detection of harmful behavior (dark personality traits, behavioral disorders, decease denialism, stigmatization of social groups etc.). With proliferation of social media, such content is increasingly impactful, while its detection at scale presents a huge methodological challenge. The workshop participants will share their research experience by reflecting both on advantages and limitations of new automated and mixed research methods of text analysis they have used for processing user-generated content. Submission instructions: Please submit your position papers (2 to 4 pages, to be published on the workshop webpage) and papers based on empirical studies (6 to 12 pages, to be published in the post-proceedings) by September 25, 2018. Camera-ready papers due: November 10, 2018. (2) CONVERSATIONS 2018: An International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design Organizers: Asbjørn Følstad (SINTEF, Norway) Symeon Papadopoulos (Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece) Ole-Christoffer Granmo (University of Agder, Norway) Effie L.-C. Law (University of Leicester, UK) Ewa Luger (University of Edinburgh, UK) Petter Bae Brandtzæg (SINTEF, Norway) WORKSHOP MOTIVATION: Chatbots enable users to interact with digital services in natural language, through text or voice dialogue. To realize the potential of chatbots in areas such as customer support, health and fitness, education, information services, research is needed in a number of interconnected fields. This workshop contributes to this endeavour by providing a cross-disciplinary arena of knowledge exchanges for researchers interested in chatbots and conversational user interfaces. KEY CHALLENGES The participants of the previous edition of this workshop, CONVERSATIONS 2017, identified four clusters of research challenges: (1) democratizing chatbots, (2) chatbot user experience, (3) context aware chatbots, and (4) natural language capabilities. We encourage contributions for this year's edition of the workshop to address the research challenges of one or more of these clusters. WORKSHOP WEBPAGE: https://conversations2018.wordpress.com/ Submission instructions: Please submit your position papers (3 to 6 pages, Springer LNCS format, to be published on the workshop webpage) or full papers presenting empirical studies or theoretical advances (6 to 12 pages, Springer LNCS format, to be published in the post-proceedings) by September 1, 2018. (3) The Future of Decentralized Governance: A Workshop on Encryption, Blockchains, and Personal Data Organizer: Harry Halpin, INRIA (France) Currently, there is a generalized crisis in governance as traditional governance encounters the Internet. On the Internet, there has been revelations of US mass surveillance and massive abuse of personal data. The traditional governance bodies of the Internet from the ITU to W3C seem hard-pressed by Silicon Valley companies, which has lead to widespread disillusionment. At the same time, the European Union's General Data Protection Directive is attempting to enforce European rights, but purely through legal rather than technical means. Yet there have been new technologies based on encryption, such as blockchain technologies, that claim to be able to revolutionize governance. But, at the same time, there are numerous perils, such as the rise of opaque AI decision-making systems and consolidation of power in the hands of a few technologists, rather than a rapid democratization of technology. Given these technical and political developments, new and improved models that take into account citizen involvement and improve meaningful participation need to be developed, along with fundamental Internet rights that can both be adopted by national governments, supra-national bodies, corporations, and cities. These principles will likely have to do with the guarantee of privacy, data protection, and other fundamental rights that are especially impacted by the Internet. This workshop will discuss the issues of decentralization, self-sovereignty, and net rights. In particular, this session will explore the understanding of the current national and international governance processes (both strengths and weaknesses, with a particular focus on the case of Russia) and new decentralized participatory practices based on crowdsourcing and citizen involvement. Confirmed participants: - Ksenia Ermoshina (CNRS): Sociology of the Russian Internet - Moxie Marlinspike (Signal): Inventor of end-to-end encryption app Signal - Ben Laurie (DeepMind): AI and security expert - Yuk Hui (Leuphana University): Philosophy of technology - Primavera Di Fillippi (CNRS): Blockchain and the Law The workshop welcomes submissions of short abstracts (up to 300 words). Several invited talk, an invited panel, and an open discussion are planned for this workshop. INSCI program committee also encourages submissions of short papers (5 to 8 pages) and full papers (9 to 12 pages) dedicated to the workshop themes by September 25, 2018. Camera-ready papers will be due November 10, 2018. (4) Internet as an issue: an international workshop on government and media narratives Organizers: Polina Kolozaridi, Leonid Yuldashev, Center for Insternet and Society, Moscow, Russia There are plenty of stereotypes about Internet in Russia. The state is usually observed as an enemy of Internet development; society and media are often determined in an occasional way. We try to explore the variety of approaches, systematise and clarify how Internet becomes an issue for regulation and discussion, what we know about it and who is constructing it. Basing on several approaches, we will try to analyse both structures and content of policies and other discourses connected with those. Using social imaginaries studies (Flichy 2004; Mansell 2013) we are analysing how policies, media and knowledge about the internet changed depending on actors and time. We also consider the structure of policy-makers and stakeholders. We stay on mild social constructivist positions encompassing knowledge and discourses as well as trying to understand the infrastructure. The panel will consist of case studies and more broad approaches, so we encourage participation of all scholars who deal with each of them. The workshop welcomes submissions of short abstracts (up to 300 words). Several invited talk, an invited panel, and an open discussion are planned for this workshop. INSCI program committee also encourages submissions of short papers (5 to 8 pages) and full papers (9 to 12 pages) dedicated to the workshop themes by September 25, 2018. Camera-ready papers will be due November 10, 2018. -- Svetlana S. Bodrunova, Prof., D.Polit.Sci. Head, Center for International Media Research School of Journalism and Mass Communications, St.Petersburg State University +7 921 933 02 14 spasibo-tebe@yandex.ru