[CFP] Re-Coding Black Mirror workshop at ISWC 2017 - Vienna

Call for papers
Re-coding Black Mirror- https://kmitd.github.io/recoding-black-mirror/
Half day workshop at the 16th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2017)
22 October 2017, Vienna

Black Mirror is a British sci-fi series directed by Charlie Brooker
portraying a dystopian future emanating from the wide use of digital
advancements. Even though Black Mirror’s episodes do not entirely rely
on the widespread availability of existing technology, some of the
advancements presented are not from such a distant future. The ethical
and social implications emerging from the increasing reliance on
digital media -partly depicted in the series- has been a longstanding
debate in critical studies underlying issues around privacy, social
control, social and individual justice and other key values around
Democracy such as freedom of speech. Computer science has picked up on
such kind of issues focusing mainly on privacy offering technical
solutions such as privacy by design and encryption amongst other
tools.

Re-coding Black Mirror is a half-day workshop which aims at promoting
a dialogue between semantic web researchers and social scientists to
address emerging social phenomena from different perspectives looking
at case scenarios similar to the ones depicted in Black Mirror and
explore potential semantic solutions to societal and ethical
challenges. It will also be a forum for raising opportunities of
networking with scholars from different fields to explore novel
research problems that can be relevant to both communities.

TOPICS

Re-coding Black Mirror is essentially about creating connections
between researchers building semantic web technologies and interested
in their potential future implication on society, and researchers
studying such impact of technology interested in the societal and
ethical risks of such technological advances. We therefore expect two
different types of works to be presented at the workshop, as described
below. We provide brief summaries of examples of what those kinds of
work could be. Possible submissions are of course not restricted to
those examples, but works addressing those scenarios would be very
much welcome too.

  * Works showing how semantic web technologies can enable scenarios
like the ones depicted in Black Mirror: Here we are looking at how
ongoing research in the semantic web community could lead to
technological advances similar to what is presented in one specific
episode (or a set of episodes if it is a recurring trend). For
example:
       - How could advances in semantically combining results in
natural language processing and social media analysis lead to the
ability to create a bot mimicking the personality of a dead person
from their online contributions? (S2E1)
       - How could semantic technologies be used to integrate
information about another person from multiple online sources (digital
footprinting), providing a mean for stalking or even blackmailing
them? (S3E3)

  * Works showing how semantic web technologies can be used to prevent
or reduce the risks depicted in Black Mirror: Many of the episodes in
Black Mirror rely on a practice and use of technology which is either
unexpected in itself, or which consequences are unexpected. Here we
are looking at how semantic web technologies could reduce those risks.
For example:
     - How could relying on semantic relations between people and
information about their network/context prevents the appearance of
extreme cases in user ratings? (S3E1)
     - How could semantic content and network analysis be used to
reduce or counter the spread of hate on social media? (S3E6)

SUBMISSION

Please submit your contribution to the workshop by July 21st 2017
(23:59 Hawaii time) through the easychair system (see [1]). We accept
three categories of submissions: full papers (max 12 pages) on
research and applied technologies, short papers (max 6 pages) about
visions and positions on forthcoming challenges and two page abstracts
on the societal and ethical risks of the aforementioned technologies.

All papers should be formatted using the Springer LNCS template and
submitted as PDF (see [2]).

We expect each paper to take as a starting point one futuristic
scenario, either directly from Black Mirror or of a similar nature, as
motivation for the work presented.

ORGANISERS

- PINELOPI TROULLINOU, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK
- MATHIEU D'AQUIN, Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway, Ireland
- ILARIA TIDDI, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK

PROGAMME COMMITTEE

Kirstie Ball, School of Management, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom
Pompeu Casanovas, Institute of Law and Technology, Universidad
Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Lina Dencik, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff
University, United Kingdom
Sara Degli Esposti, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Universdad
Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
Stefan Dietze, L3S Research Cente, University of Leipzig, Germany
Seda Guerses, COSIC Research Group, K.U. Leuven, Belgium
Pascal Hitzler, Data Semantics Laboratory, Wright State University, U.S.A.
Sabrina Kirrane, Institute for Information Business, Vienna University
of Economics and Business, Austria
Matthias Leese, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Liisa Mäkinen, Social and Public Policy, University of Helsinki, Finland
Andrea Mannocci, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, United Kingdom
Angelo Antonio Salatino, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open
University, United Kingdom
Raphaël Troncy, Data Science Department, EURECOM, France
Daniel Trottier, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus
University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Dimitris Tsapogas, Department of Computer Science, University of
Oxford, United Kingdom
Nikolas Thomopoulos, Systems Management and Strategy, University of
Greenwich, United Kingdom
Lachlan Urquhart, Information Technology Law, Horizon Digital Economy
Research Institute, United Kingdom
Frank Van Harmelen, Network Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Pieter Verdegem, School of Media, Arts & Design, University of
Westminster, United Kingdom
Serena Villata, SPARKS-WIMMICS, INRIA, France

[1] https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rbm2017
[2] https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines