<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><div class="moz-forward-container"><pre>apologies for cross-posting
==================================================================
Workshop on Understanding the Positive and Negative Sides of Social Media (PANSOM'13)
at IJCAI-13 2013
http://soccom.kmi.open.ac.uk/pansom2013/
3-5th Aug 2013. Beijing, China
==================================================================
THEME
--
In recent years, social media has continued to grow in popularity and has become a powerful platform for people to unite together under common interests. The explosive use of social media has turned it into a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the information revolution has proven to have a positive impact in society. Social platforms introduce a canvas for self-expression where users can create, manipulate and share content. Positive impacts of these platforms in society include their use in bringing information out of conflicted nations to the World (e.g. Iranian elections 2009 and Egyptian revolution 2011). They have also proven to be an effective way of propagating information, proving to spread the word before mainstream media prints a story. This has been particularly useful for word spreading-based mobilisation in emergency response and crisis situations.
On the other hand, social media platforms have appeared to be also the catalyst in fuelling violent events (e.g. during the UK riots in 2011). The proliferation of insults and personal attacks online along with the appearance of socially disruptive patterns in online social behaviour has become more and more common. Young people are becoming increasingly narcissistic, and obsessed with self-image and shallow friendships partly due to the use of Facebook and other social media platforms. Social media addiction also leads to low self-esteem and even anti-social behaviours.
This workshop will explore the novel use of techniques from machine learning, data mining, text mining, information retrieval, statistics, information security and privacy, and user modelling, to identify patterns of potentially positive and negative activities in social media by examining the online content, social interactions, and user behaviours. It will also study the metrics in measuring the positive and negative impact of social media on individuals, business organizations, and government agencies. The analysis and mining of these patterns aim to promote positive activities in social medial, while at the same time reveal harmful aspects of social media and suggest ways to tackle and to overcome the negative side.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers from various backgrounds including those from computer science, social science, and psychology, to discuss the current and emergent topics, and cutting-edge approaches to address issues relating to both positive and negative sides of social media.
TOPICS OF INTEREST
-------------------
1. Social Media Content Understanding
* Credibility of social media content
* Information diffusion and propagation
* Event detection and prediction
* Linked data in social media
* Sentiment analysis and opinion mining
2. Promoting Positive Activities in Social Media
* Topic–based recommendation systems
* Location-based recommendation systems
* Social media in education
* Social business
* Social media in emergency response and crisis situations
* Social media-based knowledge management
* Citizen journalism
* Promoting tolerance and diversity in social media
* Supply chains for social content delivery
3. Tackling the Negative Side of Social Media
* Violence contents detection from social media
* Offensive language identification
* Cyberbullying
* Cyberterrorism
* Inducing opinion bias in social media
* Fake opinion recognition
* Boycott in topic diffusion
* Rumour and spam detection
* Social bot detection
* Adult content in social media
* Socially disruptive behaviours
SUBMISSIONS
------------
We invite authors to submit papers in one of the following types:
* Long papers: up to 6 pages
* Short papers: up to 4 pages
* Position and demo papers: up to 2 pages
Papers should be formatted according to the style guide of IJCAI13 (http://ijcai13.org/files/ijcai13.zip) and should be submitted in PDF format through the EasyChair Conference System at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pansom13. There will be no double blind review process. Author names and affiliations should be included in the paper. Paper selection will be based on a peer review process.
IMPORTANT DATES
----------------
April 20, 2013 – Paper submission deadline
May 20, 2013 – Paper acceptance notification
May 30, 2013 – Camera-ready copy due
ORGANISERS
-----------
A. Elizabeth Cano, KMi, The Open University, UK
Yulan He, Aston University, UK
Kang Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Daniele Quercia, Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Spain
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
------------------
Luca Aiello, Yahoo! Research Barcelona, Spain
Sofia Angeletou, BBC, UK
Miriam Fernandez, Open University, UK
Wei Gao, Qatar Foundation, Qatar
Marcel Karnstedt, DERI, Ireland
Daniel Peotriuc, University of Sheffield, UK
Neal Lathia, University of Cambridge, UK
Matthew Rowe, Lancaster University, UK
Hassan Saif, Open University, UK
Chenghua Lin, University of Aberdeen, UK
Milan Stankovic, Hypios & University Paris-Sorbonne, France
Andrea Varga, University of Sheffield, UK
Claudia Wagner, Joanneum Research, Austria
Bin Wang, Chinese Academy of Science, China
Aba-Sah Dadzie, The University of Sheffield, UK
Xin Zhao, Peking University, China
</pre></div></div></div></body></html>