CFP: 2nd Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2012)

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   2nd Workshop on Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2012)
                 at WWW 2012
           http://socsem.open.ac.uk/msm2012

         16 Apr 2012. Lyon, France

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THEME
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Making Sense of Microposts: Big things come in small packages


With the appearance and expansion of Twitter, Facebook Like, Foursquare,
and similar low-effort publishing services, the effort required to
participate on the Web is getting lower and lower. The high-end technology
user and developer and the ordinary end user of ubiquitous, personal
technology, such as the smart phone, contribute diverse information to the
Web as part of informal and semi-formal communication and social activity.
We refer to such small user input as 'microposts': these range from
'checkin' at a location on a geo-social networking platform, through to a
status update on a social networking site. Online social media platforms
are now very often the portal of choice for the modern technology user
accustomed to sharing public-interest information. They are, increasingly,
an alternative carrier to traditional media, as seen in their role in the
Arab Spring and crises such as the 2011 Japan earthquake. Online social
activity has also witnessed the blurring of the lines between private lives
and the semi-public online social world, opening a new window into the
analysis of human behaviour, implicit knowledge, and adaptation to and
adoption of technology.

The challenge of developing novel methods for processing the enormous
streams of heterogeneous, disparate micropost data in intelligent ways and
producing valuable outputs, that may be used on a wide variety of devices
and end uses, is more important than ever before. Google+ is one of the
better-known new services, whose aim is to bootstrap microposts in order to
more effectively tailor search results to a user's social graph and profile.

This workshop will examine, broadly:
* information extraction and leveraging of semantics from microposts, with
a focus on novel methods for handling the particular challenges due to
enforced brevity of expression;
* making use of the collective knowledge encoded in microposts' semantics
in innovative ways;
* social and enterprise studies that guide the design of appealing and
usable new systems based on this type of data, by leveraging Semantic Web
technologies.

This workshop is unique in its interdisciplinary nature, targeting both
Computer Science and the Social Sciences, to help also to break down the
barriers to optimal use of Semantic Web data and technologies. The workshop
will focus on both the computational means to handle microposts and the
study of microposts, in order to identify the motivational aspects that
drive the creation and consumption of such data.


TOPICS OF INTEREST
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Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the areas below. We
especially encourage submissions from an interdisciplinary perspective,
examining the use of semantic information extracted from microposts from
Semantic Web, Social Sciences and other perspectives.

1. Microposts and Semantic Web technologies
    * Knowledge Discovery and Information Extraction
   * Factual Inference
    * Ontology/vocabulary modelling and learning from Microposts
   * Integrating Microposts into the Web of Linked Data

2. Social/Web Science studies
    * Analysis of Micropost data patterns
   * Political and polemical aspects of Microposts
    * Citizen empowerment through information availability
   * Motivations for creating and consuming Microposts
    * Relevance of Microposts and factors that influence them
   * Community/network analysis of Micropost dynamics
    * Ethics/privacy implications of publishing and consuming Microposts
    * Microposts in the corporate environment

3. Context
   * Utilising context (time, location, sentiment)
    * Contextual inference mechanisms
   * Social awareness streams and Online Presence
    * Event Detection and monitoring through Microposts

4. Applying Microposts
   * User profiling/recommendation/personalisation approaches using
Microposts
    * Public opinion mining (i.e. political consensus, brand/product
opinions)
    * Collective intelligence in inferring trends and making predictions
    * Expertise finding
   * Business analysis/market scanning
    * Urban sensing and location-based applications
   * Emergency systems and response


WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
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A keynote address will open the day. This will be followed by paper
presentations. We will hold a poster and demo session to trigger further,
more in-depth interaction between workshop participants. Key points raised
during the keynote and the participant presentations will guide an open
forum / panel discussion which will be used to conclude the workshop, with
an aim to form a more permanent discussion group.


SUBMISSIONS
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 * Full papers: 12 pages
  * Short and position papers: 8 pages
 * Demos: 2 pages
  * Mock-up interfaces: 2 page description AND one of:
- storyboard (max A3)
 - video (90 second limit)

Written submissions should be prepared according to the ACM SIG Proceedings
Template (see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates),
and should include author names and affiliations, and 3-5 keywords.
Submission is via the EasyChair Conference System, at:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=msm2012. Where a submission
includes additional material submission should be made as a single,
unencrypted zip file that includes a plain text file listing its contents.

Each submission will receive, in addition to a meta-review, at least 2 peer
reviews, with full papers at least 3 peer reviews.


IMPORTANT DATES
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Submission of Abstracts (mandatory): 03 Feb 2012
Paper Submission deadline: 06 Feb 2012
Notification of acceptance: 06 Mar 2012
Camera-ready deadline: 23 Mar 2012

Workshop program issued: 08 Mar 2012
Proceedings published (CEUR): 31 Mar 2012
Workshop - 16 Apr 2012 (Registration open to all)

(all deadlines 23:59 Hawaii Time)


Note: Authors of accepted papers will be able to take advantage of the
early-bird price for conference registration for a couple of days following
notification of acceptance.

CONTACT
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E-mail: msm2012@easychair.org
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/#!/home.php?sk=group_180472611974910
Twitter hashtag: #msm2012



ORGANISERS
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Matthew Rowe, KMi, The Open University, UK
Milan Stankovic, Hypios/University Paris-Sorbonne, France
Aba-Sah Dadzie, University of Sheffield, UK


PROGRAM COMMITTEE
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Fabian Abel, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
Sofia Angeletou, KMi, The Open University, UK
Pierpaolo Basile, University of Bari, Italy
Uldis Bojars, University of Latvia, Latvia
John Breslin, NUIG, Ireland
A. Elizabeth Cano, University of Sheffield, UK
Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
Danica Damljanovic, University of Sheffield, UK
Ali Emrouznejad, Aston Business School, UK
Guillaume Ereteo, INRIA, France
Miriam Fernandez, KMi, The Open University, UK
Fabien Gandon, INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France
Andres Garcia-Silva, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
Anna Lisa Gentile, University of Sheffield, UK
Seth van Hooland, Free University of Brussels, Belgium
Jennifer Jones, University of the West of Scotland, UK
Jelena Jovanovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Vita Lanfranchi, University of Sheffield, UK
Philippe Laublet, Universite Paris-Sorbonne, France
Joao Magalhaes, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Julie Letierce, DERI, Galway, Ireland
Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield, UK
Pablo Mendes, Freie Universitat of Berlin, Germany
Jose M. Morales del Castillo, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Alexandre Passant, DERI, Galway, Ireland
Carlos Porcel, University of Jaen, Spain
Danica Radovanovic, Oxford Internet Institute, UK
Yves Raimond, BBC, UK
Harald Sack, University of Potsdam, Germany
Bernhard Schandl, University of Vienna, Austria
Andreas Sonnenbichler, KIT, Germany
Daniel Torres Salinas, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Raphael Troncy, Eurecom, France
Mischa Tuffield, PeerIndex, UK
Victoria Uren, Aston Business School, UK
Claudia Wagner, Joanneum Research, Austria
Shenghui Wang, Vrije University, The Netherlands
Katrin Weller, University of Dusseldorf, Germany
Ziqi Zhang, University of Sheffield, UK