[ecrea] CFP: Computational Methods for Communication Science – Conference

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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS
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Computational Methods for Communication Science:
Towards A Strategic Roadmap

February 12th to February 16th, 2018
Hanover, Germany
ccsconf.com <http://ccsconf.com>


BACKGROUND:

Empirical research on interpersonal, mediated, and public communication 
is facing fundamental challenges caused by the rapid diffusion and 
dynamic development of internet-based infrastructures, platforms, 
services, and applications. Much ‘classic‘ (mass) communication is 
nowadays ‘delivered‘ via internet connections, and entirely new forms of 
interpersonal, intragroup, and public communication have emerged. 
Interactive and mobile devices enable users to actively participate in 
many communication settings, including the production and dissemination 
of own messages of various forms, such as contributions to online chat 
conversations, text comments to news events, images, and videos. Hence, 
communication as a field is tasked to deal with this new type of data 
that requires specific methodological competencies which are currently 
not part of academic training in most social science and communication 
departments. In addition, many of these challenges are impossible to 
resolve within individual research projects, by individual scholars, or 
by single academic institutions.

Specifically, the challenges that social science communities, and the 
field of communication in particular, need to address relate to I) 
competencies, tools and methods for analyzing big data, II) the access 
to and availability of big data sets, which are often generated and 
owned by private companies whose business interests may conflict with 
public use policies,  III) research ethics affected by the use of (mass) 
data traces of real human communication, and IV) organization and 
arrangement of interdisciplinary collaboration on big data research 
among social scientists and computer scientists for mutual (academic) 
benefits (e.g., finding the ‚right‘ partner, defining a project that 
offers appealing opportunities for both parties).


THE WORKSHOP

To address these issues, we are inviting international participants to 
Hanover: The mission of our workshop is to set the pathway into a new 
era of communication science in which the use of big data sets and 
methods are common and widely available research practices. We designed 
a week-long event to a) provide young scholars with the opportunity to 
acquire knowledge about computational methods and to develop skills to 
apply these methods within their research and b) bring together young 
and advanced scholars from communication and related social sciences to 
discuss the conceptual and strategic challenges described above.

The workshop will be organized in two parts. The first stage (3.5 days) 
is dedicated to the transfer of competencies. We particularly address 
young scholars who aim at acquiring skills to apply computational 
methods within communication science.

(0) Introduction into R (Day 1)
(1) Automated Content Analysis, (Days 2 – 4)*
(2) Topic Modeling, (Days 2 – 4)*
(3) Network Analysis, (Days 2 – 4)*
(4) Statistical Analysis of Large Data Sets, and (Days 2 – 4)*
(5) Acquiring Data Using APIs and Scraping. (Days 2 – 4)*
* training courses marked with an asterix are scheduled parallel

The second stage (1.5 days on Days 4 and 5) will be a joint effort of 
junior and senior scholars and computational social science experts to 
discuss strategic areas of development for communication. In an 
interactive mix of input and workshops, scholars will actively engage 
with the issues related to the idea of computational communication 
science (CCS):
• Big Data and Research Ethics,
• Combining Big Data and Conventional Methods,
• Arranging Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and
• Access and Availability of Big Data Resources.

Details on our workshops, timeline, and trainers can be found on the 
workshop homepage: ccsconf.com <http://ccsconf.com>.


APPLICATIONS

We therefore invite interested young scholars from communication science 
and neighboring disciplines to apply for participation. We offer 50 
places for young scholars (post-doctoral researchers and doctoral 
students) from empirical disciplines interested in the study of 
communication including but not limited to communication science, 
(media) psychology, sociology, and economics. Thanks to the generous 
funding of the Volkswagen Foundation, participants receive a full 
scholarship covering travel, accommodation costs, and workshop 
registration. Participants may choose to apply for the whole 5-day 
layout (R-Workshop, 1 CSS-method training course, and workshop 
conference) or for the 4-day layout (1 CSS-method training course + 
workshop conference) or the 2-day layout (workshop conference only).

To apply, scholars are asked to provide a short letter of motivation, 
including (1) a (prospective) research question in their area of 
expertise, (2) discuss how computational methods can add an advantage to 
answering this question, (3) how computational methods may help improve 
the underlying theory, and (4) what computational methods may add to the 
applicant’s academic profile. The letter must be written in English 
language and not exceed a maximum of 500 words/3500 characters.

Online applications are required; no e-mail applications will be 
accepted. Please refer to the online application form:

https://ww3.unipark.de/uc/ccshanover/


LOCATION AND TIMELINE

The event will be held in Hannover, Germany. Workshops will take place 
at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK), 
Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media 
(http://www.ijk.hmtm-hannover.de/en/en). The roadmap conference will be 
held at the Leibniz House, Convention Center of Hanover’s universities 
in the historical old town.

Online applications are due September 15th, 2017, 12:00 pm, CEST.

Letters of invitation will be sent out by September 30th, 2017.


CONFERENCE TEAM

Julia Niemann-Lenz
Sabine Reich
Dorothée Hefner
Leonard Reinecke
Christoph Klimmt
Katharina Knop-Huelss
Daniel Possler

The event is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (Scheme: “International 
Research in Computational Social Science”)

Contact:
(ccsconf /at/ hmtm-hannover.de) <mailto:(ccsconf /at/ hmtm-hannover.de)>

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