The special purpose of the conference this year is to to bridge the gap between the social sciences and computer science. Social scientific research is still largely overlooked and under-utilized in computational arenas and social scientists seldom can take advantage of computational instruments and the richness of online-generated data. This SocInfo conference workshop is designed to be attractive to social scientists by shifting emphasis on the methodology and technology needed in the field of computational social science to focus on the applications and immediate research wins from easy to use, end user friendly tools.  Our long-term research objectives are to develop technical mastery among social scientists by building easy to use powerful tools. We envision this SocInfo workshop as a venue for researchers who cross the methodological boundaries between informatics and social sciences to identify answer important research questions.

Organized by Katy Pearce and Marc Smith, this workshop welcomes short papers that demonstrate research on social media spaces using tools that are accessible without programming skills.

• Workshop papers submission: August 27, 2016
• Workshop paper acceptance notification: September 27, 2016
• Workshop final camera-ready paper due: October 14, 2016
• SocInfo 2016 Workshops Day: November 14, 2016

Duties

Organizers of accepted workshop proposals are expected to announce the workshop and disseminate call for papers, maintain the workshop website, gather submissions, conduct the reviewing process and decide upon the final workshop program. They are also expected to prepare an informal set of workshop proceedings to be distributed with the registration materials at the main conference. Workshop organizers may choose to form organizing or program committees aiming to accomplish these tasks successfully.

Note: At the organizers request, workshop papers may be included as a supplement to the main SocInfo proceedings. However, workshop organizers may also set up any archived publication mechanism that best suits their workshop.

Ideal workshop submissions will have the potential to attract the interest of researchers in computer science and social/organizational sciences. Proposals involving people of different backgrounds in the organizing committee and addressing topics at the intersection of different disciplines are encouraged.

Proposal Content

Proposals for workshops should be no more than four (4) pages in length (10pt, single column, with reasonable margins), written in English, and should contain the following:

• A concise title
• The names, affiliations, and contact information of the organizing committee. A main contact person should be specified. A typical proposal should include no more than four co-chairs.
• An indication as to whether the workshop should be considered for a half-day or full-day meeting.
• A short abstract describing the scope and main objective of the workshop. It should identify the specific issues and research questions the workshop will focus on, with a brief discussion of why the topic is of particular interest at this time and for which research communities.
• A two/three paragraph description of the workshop topic and themes.
• A list/description of any potential invited speakers, panels, or other activities.
• A description of how workshop submissions will be evaluated and selected (invited contributions, peer review, etc.). In case a PC is needed, provide a tentative list of the members.
• Historical information about the workshop, when available. Short description of the previous editions reporting highlights and details about the approximate number of attendees and number of submissions.
• A list of other related workshops held previously at related conferences, if any, together with a brief statement on how the proposed workshop differs from or how it follows-up on work presented at previous workshops.
• A short bio (one paragraph) for each member of the organizing committee, including a description of their relevant expertise. Strong proposals include organizers who bring differing perspectives to the workshop topic and who are actively connected to the communities of potential participants.

Please email your proposal in a single file to the workshop chairs socinfo2016wc@googlegroups.combefore the deadline. For additional information please contact the workshop chairs at the same address.

Workshop Chairs

• Tim Weninger (tweninge@nd.edu)
• Emilio Zagheni (emilioz@uw.edu)