Special Session: Healthcare Analytics - Improving Healthcare using Big Data Analytics

Scope

• Data governance
• Data standards
• Medical Text analytics
• Machine learning applications to healthcare
• Medical Data mining
• Predictive analytics
• Data Visualization for Healthcare Applications.
• Patient analytics
• Clinical decision making
• Clinical trials
• Health and care interventions
• Value-based care
• Population health management
• Anomaly detection

Submission Process:

Important Dates:

Organizers:

• Sherif Sakr, Health Informatics, CPHHI, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Imran Razzak, Health Informatics, CPHHI, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Special session: Social Media, Crowd Psychology and Public Opinion

Scope

• Measurement and application for crowd psychology and public opinion
• Users behavior and public opinion
• Crowd psychology, public opinion and mass communication
• Geographical characteristics and distribution of crowd psychology and public opinion
• Propagation and evolution of crowd psychology and public opinion
• Public opinion governance

Important dates

Chairs

• Hao Chen, Department of Social Psychology, Nankai University, China
• Lingnan He, School of Communication and Design, Sun Yat-sen University, China

Program Committee

• Zhihai Rong, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
• Shimin Cai, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
• Xiaogang Qiu, College of Information System and Management, National University of Defense Technology of China
• Qingyuan Wu, School of Management, Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai Campus), China

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Special Session: Towards Post-Privacy? Social Norms, Technical Possibilities and Political Regulations of Internet Usage

Scope

In 2010 Mark Zuckerberg announced a new age: ‚post-privacy’. With the spread of social media, permanent online availability, GPS tracking devices, the sharing of communication, pictures and life episodes in newly emerged online communities, privacy seems no longer a ‘social norm’. This statement looks plausible so far as the communications behaviour of ‘digital natives’ differs significantly from the habits of older generations. But it is not quite clear how far changes in privacy are not rather brought about by dubious practices of internet firms themselves – by non-transparent ‘privacy settings’, by obscure changes in terms and conditions of usage or by exploiting the trust of inexperienced customers. Under these conditions ‘post-privacy’ would constitute a permanent infringement of personal rights.
If average citizens are overburdened by the breathtaking path of technological innovation and unaware of the consequence of their own actions in cyber space, one could expect governments to step in and protect their populations against unwanted data mining and surveillance. In fact, many states have regulations in place, e.g. laws against Forth Amendment violations in the United States, the European Data Protection Directive or the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ in the EU. Privacy officers are appointed to defend the rights of citizens, data security engineers protect stored data against illegitimate usage, etc.
Nevertheless, the interest of governments to design proper privacy laws seems limited. States themselves are collecting vast sets of information about their citizens. Often such practices cross the border between security, freedom and surveillance. Election campaigns rely on sophisticated techniques of data mining to address voters. What is lacking, is a wide public discourse on legal and moral principles which should guide government policies as well as companies.
The session explores the conditions and possibilities of privacy in the age of dramatically changing technologies of information and communication. Contributions should deal with technical aspects of data protection, with internet education, with social habits and norms of e-communication, and with the challenges of political and legal regulation.

Important Dates

Papers due: Notification due: Camera-ready due: Conference date:

28/06/2017 23/07/2017 (postponed) 15/08/2017 (postponed) 16-18/10/2017

Organisers

Chair: Klaus Mueller (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)

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Special session: Conflicting Approaches to Internet Regulation: Europe vs U.S.

Scope

Over the last decade the internet, once celebrated as providing a post-territorial and post-national sphere beyond the control of governments, became a battle field between the European Union and the United States. Accepting the leadership of American corporations in internet technologies, platforms and services, the European governments, however, brought forward concerns about issues of monopolistic behaviour, tax evasion and lax standards of privacy. Several agreements were negotioated, from "Safe Harbour" the "EU-U.S. Privacy Shield". Nevertheless, during the last years, many new conflicts emerged: between European antitrust officials and Apple on attempts to control the music streaming business, between the EU and Google on dominance in internet search machines, between France and Google, between Deutsche Telecom and Microsoft ect.
The session invites contributions which adress the questions, if the internet could be kept open or if we approach its "balkanization", if the conflicts between the EU and the US reflect new challenges for internet regulation or open a new chapter of 'eocnomic warfare'.

Important dates

Papers due: Notification due: Camera-ready due: Conference date:

28/06/2017 23/07/2017 (postponed) 15/08/2017 (postponed) 16-18/10/2017

Organisers

Chair: Klaus Mueller, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland

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Special session: Sociological theories in social media analysis in the context of information technology development

Scope

Classical social theories emerged at a time when people’s access to partners with whom various social relationships could be formed would encounter significant constraints resulting from limited mobility and communication. In the context of the development of new areas of human activity, which takes place through the advancement of information technology and the associated rapid development of social media, the emergence of newer types of interactions can be observed in communities, resulting in the formation of various social organisations, often with many members, characterised by variability and of a different character. Organisations that form in social media undoubtedly have some original features related to the number of potential partners to interact with, ease of contact in the virtual world, and the dynamics and volatile nature of these relationships.
Thus, the following questions emerge: whether and how developed classical social theories fit in with new conditions, how they should be modified.
The question remains whether and to what degree classical sociological models, such as group formation, roles played by individuals and their interpretations, impact of significant individuals on their environment, retain relevance in social media. Currently conducted research more and more often uses social network analysis (SNA) to analyse the dynamics of relations between actors, which impact the functioning of social groups and economic, political and global organisations and shape their processes. This method presents many challenges to analysts and raises numerous methodological problems. By changing the point of view and perception of research problems, it establishes new framework of interpretation, expanding the techniques of researchers of social phenomena.
Therefore, we invite those who already use network analysis in their research practice, as well as researchers who, in their statements, wish to depict development possibilities and use the possibility to apply this method in the public arena, to join the group. Topics of interest are:
• application of network theory, actor-network theory and network exchange theories to the analysis of economic, political and social phenomena,
• application of existing models and theories to the analysis of the structure of communication in social media (instant messengers, blogs, etc.),
• application of social network analysis methods and sociological models to solving various types of practical problems,
• sociological interpretation of different types of network models,
• possibilities and limitations of using network analysis in research strategies.

Important dates

Papers due: Notification due: Camera-ready due: Conference date:

28/06/2017 23/07/2017 (postponed) 15/08/2017 (postponed) 16-18/10/2017

Organisers

• Jaroslaw Kozlak (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)
• Maria Stojkow (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)
• Anna Zygmunt (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)
• Dorota Zuchowska-Skiba (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)

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Special session: Artificial Intelligence methods for analyzing Social Events

Scope

With the rapid development of social events, social event data formulations transform from texts and figures to multivariate forms, such as videos, live telecast, Augmented Reality (AR) scenes, and so forth. The change brings new problems on social event analysis. The development of social event is connected to Artificial Intelligence (AI) closely. The application of AI methods for analysing social events can push forward the development of social events and help people build virtual society on the Internet to reconstruct the relationship between people in the real world, make people more closely linked together, communicate with each other at anytime and anywhere, and produce knowledge in a collaborative way. The researches on this session consist of the following components:
• Data analysis of social event data
• Social event data mining
• Semantic analysis of social event data, including shallow semantic analysis, deep semantic analysis, and public sentiment analysis
• Social event network analysis
• Applications of AI methods for analyzing social events
• Data Visualization for social events

Objectives and aims

The application of Artificial Intelligence methods for analyzing Social Events has three contributions to Behavioral, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Computing.

State-of-the-art AI techniques

The most important progress of current AI development, on the one hand, is the ability of robots to perceive external environmental information, such as AlphaGo, iCub, and Google Autopilot Cars; on the other hand, is the development of deep neural networks. Deep neural networks have shown amazing performance in pattern recognition, image recognition, speech recognition, and some natural language processing tasks. Utilizing AI techniques, we can obtain better models for social event analysis, which is benefit for Behavioral, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Computing.


Multiple research domains

AI in social events covers many research topics, such as Natural Language Processing, Geographic Information System, Data Mining and so on. The basic unit of social event is activity and language. How to make machine understand human language is not only a crucial issue in AI, but also a basic issue in Socio-Cultural Computing. Meanwhile, social event can be stored as texts, figures, videos, live telecast, and even AR scenes. The analysis of abundant social event forms need knowledge of multiple domains. These demands make AI in social event a crucial issue in Behavioral, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Computing.


Mature applications

According to IDC, a wide range of cognitive computing systems and AI applications will drive global industry earnings growth from $ 8 billion in 2016 to $ 47 billion in 2020. For economic, the main AI application in this industry is sales, marketing, services, regulation, claims and risks. Typical use cases include project consultants and recommendations, fraud analysis and investigation, management intelligence, automated claims processing, automatic threat intelligence and prevention systems. Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Mature applications of AI in social event can speed up the development of social computing since it is a research issue which is associated with computer science closely.
Our goal is to use wide domain knowledge and latest AI techniques to promote the development of Behavioral, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Computing.

Important dates

Papers due: Notification due: Camera-ready due: Conference date:

28/06/2017 23/07/2017 (postponed) 15/08/2017 (postponed) 16-18/10/2017

Organisers

• Yanhui Gu (School of Computer and Science, Nanjing Normal University, China)
Postal mailing address: Wenyuan Road No.1, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, P.R.China
E-mail: gu@njnu.edu.cn

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Common rules of submission process

• All papers will be reviewed by the Program Committee on the basis of technical quality, relevance, originality, significance, and clarity. Papers must be submitted in PDF format through: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=besc2017
• All submissions should use IEEE two-column style. Templates are available from http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html
• BESC 2017 accepts scientific papers (6 pages), position papers (2 pages) and demo papers (2 pages)
• Submission of a paper is regarded as a commitment that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will register and attend the conference to present the work.
• All accepted papers will be submitted for inclusion into IEEE Xplore as well as other abstracting and Indexing (A&I) services, e.g. EI, DBLP and Thomson Reuters (Web of Science).