This is the first in a series of three symposia that discuss societal challenges in computational social sciences. In the first year, the focus will be on “Inequality and Imbalance” (London, 2017). Future events will be focused on “Bias and Discrimination” (Cologne, 2018) and “Polarization and Radicalization” (Zurich, 2019).

With these three events we provide a platform to address one of the most pressing challenges in today’s digital society: understanding the role that digital technologies, the Web, and the algorithms used therein play in the mediation and creation of inequalities, discrimination and polarization.

By addressing inequality as the topical issue for the symposium series we intend to explore how CSS can contribute to opening up new ways of thinking about, of measuring, detecting and coping with social inequality, discrimination, and polarization. We will discuss how divides and inequalities are proliferated in digital society, how social cleavages can be observed via web data, how the organizational structure of the web itself generates biases and inequality, and how, in contrast, algorithms and computational tools might help to reduce discrimination and inequality. We will also investigate how bias and unequal social structures foster political tension and polarization, including issues of radicalization and hate.

The Symposium series is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

SYMPOSIUM 2017

The Symposium 2017 was a three-day event consisting of:

• a two-days, single-track conference featuring a series of invited talks that will provide different perspectives on challenges in the area of Inequality and Imbalance
• a day of multiple satellite events, including workshop and tutorials
• an open call for contributed presentations that will provide opportunities for computational social scientists to present and discuss their own work
• an open call for workshop and tutorial organization that will provide opportunities for computational social scientists to gather focus groups around the latest trends in Computational Social Science
• plenty of possibilities for interdisciplinary networking
• an evening “science slam” with a selection of short scientific talk where scientists present their own research in front of a non-expert audience

You can register online via Eventbrite (click here) until November 6th, 2017.

The registration fee is 60 GBP. It covers the participation fee for the workshop and tutorial day (November 15th, 2017) and the two main conference days (November 16th-17th, 2017), including coffee breaks and lunch. To secure a place for the workshop and tutorial day, don’t forget to register early. A number of free registrations for the workshop and tutorial day are available and will be given on a first come, first served basis.

Cancellation Policy

Attendees can receive refunds up to 7 days before the event starts (November 8th, 2017). Cancellation must be made in writing by sending an email to css.events@gesis.org

WORKSHOPS & TUTORIALS

Full Day

Workshop: Quantitative Tools for Qualitative Analysis: Computational Social Science Meets Discourse Analysis  < Click for more details
Organized by Robin Tschötschel (University of Amsterdam), Thomas Jacobs (Ghent University), Julie M. Birkholz (Ghent University), Anton Törnberg (Gothenburg University) & Petter Törrnberg (University of Amsterdam)

Tutorial: Integrating Social Theory with Computational and Spatial Methods for Urban Data Science < Click for more details
Organized by Bruno Gonçalves (New York University), Anastasios Noulas (New York University) & Rossano Schifanella (University of Turin)

Half-day

Morning Workshop: Interpretability of Algorithmic Systems < Click for more details
Organized by Adrian Weller (University of Cambridge & The Alan Turing Institute) & Tameem Adel (University of Cambridge)

Morning Tutorial: Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Creating Maps and Measures with NodeXL < Click for more details
Organized by Marc A. Smith (Social Media Research Foundation)

Afternoon Workshop: Addressing Big Societal Challenges with Digital Behavioral Data < Click for more details
Organized by Mathieu Génois (GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences), Katrin Weller (GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences), Julian Kohne (GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences), Claudia Wagner (GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences & University of Koblenz -Landau) & Markus Strohmaier (GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences & RWTH Aachen University)

Afternoon Workshop: Developing Intelligent Decision Support Systems: Societal Challenges and Technical Strategies  < Click for more details
Organized by Sharon Clancy (University of Nottingham), Claire Palmer (University of Nottingham) & Richard Hazledine (ConnectMore Solutions)

Afternoon Tutorial: Quantitative Text Analysis Using R < Click for more details
Organized by Kenneth Benoit (London School of Economics) & Kohei Watanabe (London School of Economics)

ACCEPTED PAPERS

(Don’t) Mention the War: A Comparison of Wikipedia and Britannica Articles on National Histories
Anna Samoilenko, Florian Lemmerich, Maria Zens, Mohsen Jadidi, Mathieu Génois and Markus Strohmaier

A Community Based Model for Social Capital
Christopher Spratt and Jun Hong

A Typology Classification of Exclusion and Marginalization in Data-driven Digital Societies
Mamello Thinyane

Are Facebook Pages Missing at Random After a Social Movement? A two-year Panel Study on Social Media Activities of Hong Kong Facebook Pages after the 2014 Occupy Movement
Chung-Hong Chan and King-Wa Fu

Are the Social Media Use Patterns Changing? Findings from Finland
Ilkka Koiranen and Pekka Räsänen

Computationally Inferred Genealogical Networks Uncover Long-term Trends in Assortative Mating
Eric Malmi and Aristides Gionis

Cooperation-driven Hierarchy is Interpreted as Good Reputation
Alberto Antonioni

Corruption and Inequality in Public Contracting: Evidence from US Federal Contracts
Mihály Fazekas, Romain Ferrali and Johannes Wachs

Cultural Investment and Urban Socio-economic Development: a Geosocial Network Approach
Xiao Zhou, Desislava Hristova, Anastasios Noulas, Cecilia Mascolo and Max Sklar

Digital Discrimination: Political Bias in Internet Service Provision across Ethnic Groups
Nils Weidmann

Divided We Stand: Mobile Culture and Digital Inequality in India
Madhu

Do Algorithmic Recommendations Favor Diversity in Music Consumption? Evidences from Log Data of a Streaming Service
Samuel Coavoux and Jean-Samuel Beuscart

Emerging Databased Democracies in China and India
Payal Arora

Emerging Housing Wealth Inequality
Omar A. Guerrero

Emerging of Inequality in Financial Transactions Data
Marcella Tambuscio, Alfonso Semeraro, Silvia Ronchiadin and Giancarlo Ruffo

Ethnic Discussions in Russian-language Social Media: Representation of Ethnicities and Judgment Analysis
Olessia Koltsova, Sergei Koltcov, Sergey Nikolenko, Svetlana Alexeeva and Oleg Nagorny

Fair Sharing for Sharing Economy Platforms
Abhijnan Chakraborty, Asia J. Biega, Aniko Hannak and Krishna Gummadi

Gender Disparities in Science? Dropout, Productivity, Collaborations and Success of Male and Female Computer Scientists
Mohsen Jadidi, Fariba Karimi, Haiko Lietz and Claudia Wagner

Gender Inequalities in Political Participation: a Study of the 2017 UK General Elections on Twitter
Esther González Caicedo, Matteo Manca and David Laniado

Geo-social Capital as a Relational Measure to Map Inequality
Andreas Koch

Girls Who Code: Gender Differences in Behavior and Outcome on Stack Overflow
Anna May, Johannes Wachs and Anikó Hannák

Homophily Explains Perception Biases in Social Networks
Eun Lee, Fariba Karimi, Hang-Hyun Jo, Markus Strohmaier and Claudia Wagner

Inequality is Higher in Fixed Clustered Networks with Punishment Institutions
Milena Tsvetkova, Claudia Wagner and Andrew Mao

Measuring and Mitigating New Forms of Digital Social Exclusion/Inclusion
Robin Williams, Rob Procter, James Stewart, Gina Neff and Wifak Gueddana

Not All Bots Are Created Equal: Automated Sociality and the Spread of Political Information in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections
Olga Boichak, Sam Jackson, Jeff Hemsley and Sikana Tanupabrungsun

Online vs. Offline Inequalities: Examining Disableist Infrastructure via Open Data
Vanessa Thomas

Overcoming the Imbalance Between Tag Recommendation Approaches and Real-World Folksonomy Structures with Cognitive-Inspired Algorithms
Dominik Kowald and Elisabeth Lex

Participative Epistemology in Social Data Science for Workforce Development
Gian Marco Campagnolo, Robin Williams, Beatrice Symington, Alberto Acerbi and Duncan Chapple

Predicting Demographics, Moral Foundations, and Human Values from Digital Behaviors
Kyriaki Kalimeri, Mariano Gastón Beiró, Robert Raleigh and Ciro Cattuto

Qualities and Inequalities: Gender and Valuation in the Contemporary Art World
Taylor Brown

Responsible Team Players Wanted: An Analysis of Soft Skill Requirements in Job Advertisements
Federica Calanca, Luiza Sayfullina, Eric Malmi and Aristides Gionis

Sharing Is Growing – But We Don’t See It
Jan Lorenz

Social Capital, Bounded Agency and Fuzzy Logic – Making Data Work in Real World Applications
Sharon Clancy and Claire Palmer

Stratified and Defensive Democracy: Systematic Study of Israeli Planning Hearings
Talia Margalit and Adriana Kemp

Talking the Talk? Representation of Minority Interests Through Speech and Social Media of Elected Officials
Michael Kowald

Temporal Profile Similarity Through Spatiotemporal Traces of Users in Location-based Networks
Krittika D’Silva, Anastasios Noulas, Mirco Musolesi, Cecilia Mascolo and Max Sklar

The Branching Pipeline: Understanding Gender Disparities Within and Across Fields
Andrei Cimpian, Aniko Hannak, Kenny Joseph and Daniel B. Larremore

The Effect of Quality and Success Imbalance on User Engagement
Rossano Schifanella, Luca Maria Aiello and Miriam Redi

The Representation of Disadvantaged Groups in the Digital Sphere – TED Talks and Their Public Perception on YouTube
Carsten Schwemmer

The Role of Shopping Malls in Social Inequality
Mariano Gastón Beiró, Ciro Cattuto, Loreto Bravo, Diego Caro, Leo Ferres and Eduardo Graells-Garrido

Urban Patterns and Citizen Participation: Geographical Data Analysis of Decidim Barcelona
Matteo Manca, Pablo Aragón and Antonio Calleja-López

Women on the Online Capital Market: What’s in a Money Network?
Ágnes Horvát

MEET THE SPEAKERS

Do you want to discuss your work with experts in the field? At the symposium, you have the chance to book a 1-on-1 meeting with some of our keynote speakers and talk about your own work, potential shared interests or new ideas. In particular, this is an opportunity for junior scholars (e.g. PhD candidates) who want to receive some feedback on their ideas and recommendations for future work.

Three of our keynote speakers are available for counselling on the workshop and tutorial day. Symposium participants can book individual consulting slots of approx. 15-20 minutes with the keynote speakers to discuss ideas for their future work or planned projects. To book a consulting slot, please send an email with the subject “Meet the Speakers” to css.eurosymposium@gmail.com with the following information:

• First Name:
• Last Name:
• Organization:
• Department:
• Position:
• Email:
• Keynote Speaker: please state the speaker you want to meet (Eszter Hargittai / Kristina Lerman / Keith Payne)
• Background: please summarize your research background in two to three sentences
• Topic for discussion: please describe what you want to discuss in the meeting briefly (approx. up to five sentences), e.g. your ideas for future work or planned projects

Consulting slots will be distributed according to the availability of the keynote speakers. Places are limited.

SCIENCE SLAM AND DATA BEERS

On the night of the 16^th, starting at 6.30pm, we welcome you to join us at ScienceSlam+Databeers (https://databeersldn.tumblr.com), a fun event with short, entertaining science talks and **free beer**! The event will take place at City University London (https://goo.gl/maps/v4BGBy1iNwj). If you are interested, please remember to select the appropriate option on the registration form.

Springer Best Presentation Award

Congratulations to Anna May, Johannes Wachs and Anikó Hannák for winning the Springer Best Presentation Award with their presentation titled Girls Who Code: Gender Differences in Behavior and Outcome on Stack Overflow.

Paper/poster submission is not a requirement for attendance.

Travel Grants

Due to the generous funding by Volkswagen Foundation we are able to offer up to 40 travel grants to early career researchers whose talks are accepted for the symposium. Both plenary talk presenters and workshop/ tutorial presenters are eligible for the travel grants.

The travel grant consists of 500 EUR for authors from non-European countries or 250 EUR for authors from Europe and also covers the registration fee for the symposium. Travel grant recipients will be selected by a committee of experts based on their academic excellence, financial needs and diversity (e.g. gender, geographical and disciplinary diversity)

Please indicate in your submission 1) if you wish to apply for a travel grant, 2) your motivation for the grant application and 3) whether you will still attend the symposium without a travel grant.

The grants aim to especially support attendees with limited travel resources and attendees from countries where Computational Social Science is not yet well established.

Visa Support

Letters of support can be requested by accepted European Symposium Series on Societal Challenges in Computational Social Science authors or registrants with a completed registration with payment. If you are attending the European Symposium and require a letter of support, please send the following information to css.eurosymposium@gmail.com:

• First/Given Name:
• Family/Last Name:
• Position:
• Organization:
• Department:
• Address:
• City:
• Zip/Postal Code:
• Country:
• Email:
• Are you an author of a paper?
• Paper title:
• If not accepted author, Registration Confirmation Nr.: