IUSSP Call for contributions: Social Media and Demographic Research - Applications and Implications

This Research Workshop is co-organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Big Data and Population Processes as a side event at the 10th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM-16).

The IUSSP Panel on Big Data and Population Processes invites contributions from colleagues interested in Computational Demography. The Panel encourages submissions from researchers who wish to present their work, as well as the attendance of scholars interested in broadening their exposure to the topic.
 
Demography has been a data-driven discipline since its birth. Data collection and the development of formal methods have sustained most of the major advances in our understanding of population processes. The global spread of Social Media has generated new opportunities for demographic research, as individuals leave an increasing quantity of traces online that can be aggregated and mined for population research. At the same time, the use of Social Media and Internet are affecting people’s daily activities as well as life planning, with implications for demographic behavior.
 
There are clear benefits inherent in connecting demography and data science. As ever more complex population-level data become available, demography can offer rigorously-developed concepts, measures and methods to those involved in the ‘big social data’ revolution. As social media services become a major source of social scientific data, the interaction with data science holds great potential to advance demographic research as well. Despite the great potential involved in these interactions, there is unfortunately very limited communication between population researchers and data scientists. This workshop is intended to favor communication and exchange between the two communities and would revolve around the main theme of applications and implications of social media for demographic research. Topics that are relevant for the workshop include, but are not limited to: Population research with social media data; Demographic features of online communities or services; Sentiment analysis associated to demographic events like immigration; Implications of social media and Internet for demographic behavior; Now casting fertility, mortality or migration with online data; Understanding population health with social media data; Methods for extracting information from non-representative samples; and Applications of demographic methods to online populations.

Participants who wish to present their research must send an extended abstract (2-4 pages) or a full paper by e-mail to smdrworkshop2016 @googlegroups.com by 18 March 2016.  For more information, see https://sites.google.com/site/smdrworkshop/.