[Air-L] JITP2011: The Future of Computational Social Science

[David Berry]

JITP2011: The Future of Computational Social Science

CALL FOR PAPERS

May 16 & 17, 2011 at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA

The 3rd annual, two-day Journal of Information Technology & Politics
(JITP) thematic conference will be in Seattle, Washington, coordinated
by the Department of Political Science and the Center for American
Politics and Public Policy (CAPPP) at the University of Washington.

APPROACH

Computational social science is an emergent field and source of new
theoretical and methodological innovation for social science more
broadly. Multidisciplinary teams of social and computer scientists are
increasingly common in the lab and at workshops where cross-
fertilization occurs in the areas of theory, data, methods, and tools.
Peer-reviewed interdisciplinary work is becoming more common as the
computational tools and techniques of computer science are being used
by social scientists. Previously, large-scale computational processing
was the purview of expensive, university-centric computing labs. Now,
with the democratization of technology, universities and for-profit
firms increasingly provide large amounts of inexpensive computing
power to researchers and citizens alike.

It is the potential of these new computational technologies and
related Web-based platforms for research, politics, and governance
that led to the creation of the Journal of Information Technology &
Politics. Previous special issues on "Text Annotation for Political
Science" 5(1), "Politics: Web 2.0" 6(3/4), "YouTube and the 2008
Election Cycle in the United States" 7(2/3), and "The Politics of Open
Source" (in production) have focused the attention of researchers on
the expansive new landscape of digital democracy as well as the
architecture and tools that underpin it.

In their 2009 Science article, David Lazer and colleagues highlighted
some of the future challenges for scholars working in this area.
"Computational social science could become the exclusive domain of
private companies and government agencies. Alternatively, there might
emerge a privileged set of academic researchers presiding over private
data from which they produce papers that cannot be critiqued or
replicated. Neither scenario will serve the long-term public interest
of accumulating, verifying, and disseminating knowledge." Luckily, the
phenomenon of computational social science is distributed so widely
and found in such variety that these scenarios are unlikely. The
trends towards openness and data and tool sharing are notable
breakthroughs in a sphere where proprietary approaches dominate. Data,
method, and tool transparency are increasingly watchwords for
governments and researchers.

With this background in mind, we invite a wide range of paper
submissions on the future of computational social science. Submissions
may include, but are not limited to:

•	Applications of information theory to social science research
•	Methodologies and tools for studying users and information on social
media services
•	Projects featuring novel uses of computer assisted qualitative data
analysis software
•	Large-scale empirical analysis and modeling
•	Web technologies and data mining
•	Interdisciplinary methodologies in collaborative research
•	Pedagogical issues in computational social science
•	Computer simulations in political science education and training
•	Concepts from social sciences enhanced by computation, such as
social network analysis
•	Innovation in socio-technical network and infrastructure analysis



PAPER SUBMISSIONS
Authors are invited to prepare and submit to JITP a research paper,
policy viewpoint, workbench note, or teaching innovation manuscript by
January 1, 2011. Proposals for full panel presentations will also be
accepted. Please contact the conference manager to discuss panels.
Papers accepted for publication will be invited to revise and resubmit
their articles for publication in a special issue, or double issue, of
JITP.
Authors should "establish membership" at the JITP website, http://www.jitp.net,
to submit a paper. Follow the instructions for regular article
submissions, being sure to indicate that the paper is for JITP2011 in
the comments section.

Papers will be put through an expedited, blind peer review process by
the Program Committee, and authors will be notified about a decision
by March 1, 2011. A small number of papers will be accepted for
presentation at the conference. Other paper authors will be invited to
present a poster during an evening reception.

BEST PAPER AND POSTER CASH PRIZES

The author (or authors) of the best research paper will receive a cash
prize. The creator (or creators) of the best poster/research
presentation will also receive a cash prize.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Gil ad Ariely, Lauder School of Government Diplomacy and Strategy,
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya
Paul M. Baker, Georgia Institute of Technology
David M. Berry, Swansea University, UK.
Chris Bronk, Rice University
Jana Diesner, Carnegie Mellon University
Muzammil M. Hussain, University of Washington
Daniel Katz, Fellow, University of Michigan, Center for the Study of
Complex Systems
Jacob Groshek, Iowa State University
Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech
Georgios Lappas, Technological Educational Institution of Western
Macedonia, Greece
Azi Lev-On, Ariel University Center
Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano, Argonne National Laboratory and the
University of Chicago
Bruce Neubauer, Albany State University
Andre Oboler, Monash University, Australia
Justin Reedy, University of Washington
Joseph W. Roberts, Roger Williams University
Scott Robertson, University of Hawaii
Derek Ruths, McGill University
Chirag Shah, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair
Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University, UK
John Wilkerson, University of Washington, co-chair