[Air-L] Last 2 Days to Submit Papers & Posters for JITP 2011 - "The Future of Computational Social Science" - May 16 & 17 @UW in Seattle

[Stuart Shulman]

Last 2 Days to Submit Papers & Posters for JITP 2011
"The Future of Computational Social Science"
May 16 & 17 @UW in Seattle

http://www.umass.edu/jitp/

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 & POSTER SUBMISSIONS
Authors are invited to prepare and submit to JITP a research paper, policy
viewpoint, workbench note, or teaching innovation manuscript by January 30,
2011. Papers accepted for publication will be invited to revise and resubmit
their articles for publication in a special issue, or double issue, of JITP.
Proposals for full panel presentations will also be accepted. Please contact
the conference manager to discuss panels.

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.

Authors who wish to submit poster presentations directly should email
abstracts of no more than 250 words to the conference manager (
mgoncalves at pubpol.umass.edu) by January 30, 2011.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
JITP 2011 is pleased to welcome Jaime Teevan as the 2011 Keynote Speaker.
Jaime is a researcher in the Context, Learning, and User Experience for
Search (CLUES) Group at Microsoft Research. Her work explores how our
digital past can help shape our future information interactions. Jaime was
named a Technology Review (TR35) 2009 Young Innovator for her research on
personalized search. She co-authored the first book on collaborative Web
search, and is co-chair of the Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) 2012
conference.

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
Baden Hughes, University of Melbourne
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
Mack Shelley, Iowa State University
Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair
Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University, UK
John Wilkerson, University of Washington, co-chair

-- 

Stuart Shulman
President & CEO
Texifter, LLC <http://www.texifter.com/>


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