29.1755, Calls: Computational Linguistics/USA
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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1755. Mon Apr 23 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 29.1755, Calls: Computational Linguistics/USA
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Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 17:47:23
From: Anna Feldman [feldmana at montclair.edu]
Subject: COLING 2018 First Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Internet Freedom
Full Title: COLING 2018 First Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Internet Freedom
Short Title: NLP4IF
Date: 20-Aug-2018 - 21-Aug-2018
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Contact Person: Anna Feldman
Meeting Email: feldmana at montclair.edu
Web Site: https://cbrew.github.io/nlp4if/
Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
Call Deadline: 25-May-2018
Meeting Description:
COLING 2018 First Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Internet Freedom
We’re happy to feature three keynote speakers!
1. Dr. Jennifer Pan (Stanford University) `How the Chinese Government
Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument’
2. Dr. Jedidiah Crandall (University of New Mexico): `How to Talk Dirty and
Influence Machines'
3. Dr. Shaomei Wu (Facebook): TBA
According to the recent report produced by Freedom House (freedomhouse.org),
an “independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom
and democracy around the world”, Internet freedom declined in 2016 for the
sixth consecutive year. 67% of all Internet users live in countries where
criticism of the government, military, or ruling family are subject to
censorship. Social media users face unprecedented penalties, as authorities in
38 countries made arrests based on social media posts over the past year.
Globally, 27% of all internet users live in countries where people have been
arrested for publishing, sharing, or merely “liking” content on Facebook.
Governments are increasingly going after messaging apps like WhatsApp and
Telegram, which can spread information quickly and securely.
Various barriers exist to prevent citizens of a large number of countries to
access information. Some involve infrastructural and economic barriers, others
violations of user rights such as surveillance, privacy and repercussions for
online speech and activities such as imprisonment, extralegal harassment or
cyberattacks. Yet another area is limits on content, which involves legal
regulations on content, technical filtering and blocking websites,
(self-)censorship.
Large internet providers are effective monopolies, and themselves have the
power to use NLP techniques to control information flow. Users are suspended
or banned, sometimes without human intervention, and with little opportunity
for redress. Users react to this by using coded, oblique or metaphorical
language, by taking steps to conceal their identity such as the use of
multiple accounts, raising questions about who the real originating author of
a post actually is.
Travel stipends:
Support from the US National Science Foundation allows us to offer domestic
travel grants to student participants. Anyone currently enrolled as a student
at the Bachelor, Master, or Doctoral level in a US university is eligible to
apply for a domestic travel stipend.
To apply, write to feldmana at montclair.edu with the following details:
1. Your name
2. Your university and departmental affiliation
3. Your highest completed degree (e.g., bachelor, master) and the degree on
which you are currently working (e.g., MS, MA, PhD, JD, MD)
4. A brief (approximately 250-word) expression of interest in the topic of the
workshop
5. Are you an active participant? (i.e., are you going to present your
research?)
6. Your current funding situation (i.e., do you have other sources of funds to
attend this workshop?)
Applications are due end-of-day on July 6, 2018.
2nd Call for Papers:
COLING 2018 Workshop on NLP for Internet Freedom (NLP4IF)
(Santa Fe, New Mexico on either August 20 or August 25-26, 2018 (TBD))
Paper submission deadline: May 25, 2018
Notifications: June 20, 2018
Camera-ready submissions: June 30, 2018
The topics of interest include (but are not limited) to the following:
- Censorship detection: detecting deleted or edited text; detecting blocked
keywords/banned terms
- Censorship circumvention techniques: linguistically inspired countermeasure
for Internet censorship such as keyword substitution, expanding coverage of
existing banned terms, text paraphrasing, linguistic steganography, generating
information morphs etc.
- Detection of self-censorship
- Identifying potentially censorable content
- Disinformation/Misinformation detection: fake news, fake accounts, rumor
detection, etc.
- Techniques to empirically measure Internet censorship across communication
platforms
- Investigations on covert linguistic communication and its limits
- Identity and private information detection
- Passive and targeted surveillance techniques
- Ethics in NLP
- ''Walled gardens”, personalization and fragmentation of the online public
space
We hope that our workshop will promote Internet freedom in countries where
accessing and sharing of information are strictly controlled by censorship.
Submission Guidelines:
Submissions should be written in English and anonymized with regard to the
authors and/or their institution (no author-identifying information on the
title page nor anywhere in the paper), including referencing style as usual.
Authors should also ensure that identifying meta-information is removed from
files submitted for review.
Submissions must use the Word or LaTeX template files provided by COLING 2018
and conform to the format defined by the COLING 2018 style guidelines.
- Long paper submission: up to 8 pages of content, plus 2 pages for
references; final versions of long papers: one additional page: up to 9 pages
with unlimited pages for references
- Short paper submission: up to 4 pages of content, plus 2 pages for
references; final version of short papers: up to 5 pages with unlimited pages
for references
PDF files must be submitted electronically via the START submission system
https://www.softconf.com/coling2018/ws-NLP4IF/. The recommended style files
are available at
http://coling2018.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/coling2018.zip .
Double submission policy: Parallel submission to other meetings or
publications are possible but must be immediately notified to the workshop
contact person. If accepted, withdrawals are only possible within two days
after notification.
(See https://cbrew.github.io/nlp4if/ for more details about the topics and
submission guidelines)
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