AAAI Fall Symposium Series 2013: The Symposium on Social Networks and Social Contagion

November 15-17, 2013, Westin Arlington Gateway, Arlington, Virginia

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Important Dates
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Paper submission deadline: June 7, 2013
Notification of acceptance: June 21, 2013
SNSC Symposium: November 15-17, 2013

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Symposium Theme
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With the emergence of Computational Social Science as a field of collaboration between
computer scientists and social scientists, the study of social networks and processes
on these networks (social contagion) has been gaining interest. Many topics of traditional
sociological interest (such as the diffusion of innovations, emergence of norms,
identification of influencer) can now be studied using detailed computational models and
extensive simulation. The advent and popularity of online social media also allows the
creation of massive data sets which can inform models and underlying sociological theory.
The ubiquity of "smart devices" (such as smart phones) also provides opportunities to
gather extensive data on the behaviors and interactions of humans in "real space".

The goal of this symposium is to bring together a community of researchers interested
in addressing these issues and to encourage interdisciplinary approaches to these problems.
We specifically encourage participation and contributions from many communities, including
computer science, statistics, mathematics, the social, behavioral and economic sciences,
and the medical and health sciences.

Point of contact for further questions:
Samarth Swarup (swarup@vbi.vt.edu)

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Topics
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Papers are invited on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

Social Contagion
--the spread of ideas or beliefs
--emotion contagion
--diffusion of information
--the spread of changes in language
--diffusion of innovations
--emergence of norms
--interventions to prevent contagion
--influence maximization
--complex contagion
--virtual agents, agent-human contagion
--disease diffusion models
--diffusion of risk behaviors in networks
--diffusion of health behaviors in networks

Game Theory in Social Networks and Social Contagion
--influence maximization
--influence blocking maximization game
--other game-theoretic approaches

Network Modeling
--exponential random graph models
--stochastic actor models
--network evolution models, etc.

Network-based Inference
--label inference
--network structure inference
--contagion model inference

Human Data Elicitation
--expression of attitudes/personality from online sources (such as Twitter and Facebook)
--using social media for tracking social contagion, developing social networks, etc.
--crowdsourcing as a means to learn about humans
--Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) as "virtual laboratories" to study social contagion
--reality mining for social networks

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Submissions
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Submissions are solicited as papers of no more than 8 pages in length, in AAAI format.

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Organizing Committee
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* Samarth Swarup, Virginia Tech
* Madhav Marathe, Virginia Tech
* Kiran Lakkaraju, Sandia National Laboratory
* Milind Tambe, University of Southern California
* Cynthia Lakon, University of California, Irvine

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Program Committee
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* Winter Mason, Stevens University of Technology
* Cheng Wang, University of California, Irvine
* Kayo Fujimoto, University of Texas - Health Science Center at Houston
* Lorien Jasny, University of California, Davis
* Mina Youssef, Virginia Tech
* Kristian Lum, Virginia Tech
* Travis Bauer, Sandia National Laboratory
* Nitin Agarwal, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
* Stephen Verzi, Sandia National Laboratory
* Jonathan Whetzel, Sandia National Laboratory