Fwd: [DW] [civicmedia-researchers] CFP: Abusive Language Online

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From: Steven Clift 

Democracies Online

[civicmedia-researchers] CFP: Abusive Language Online by Steven Clift in Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire See CFP below ... A comment ... as someone monitors all sorts of political online groups on Facebook, the conspiratorial tone is a return of what I saw on political USENET newsgroups back in the 1990s. They were essentially anonymous and totally chaotic or totally controlled if moderate (to keep politics out of groups). It was terrible stuff. Crafting another way led to E-Democracy's real name accountability based forums with strong civility and active human facilitation. We did this in 1994 a decade before Facebook brought to the masses. Again and again, folks hope for the magic bullet of cheap technology to police the abuse at a low cost. Look at news online commenting. It doesn't work or only can only help boost the essential role of active facilitators that are supported by good rules and a culture of respect for their leadership. Facilitators need to be real named people and not the mystery man behind the curtain. While real names work well on Facebook and encourage accountability and self-control/censorship among "friends" and on public posts, the introduction of less visible (to your friends and relatives) posts to closed and secret groups have unleashed the beast inside of many of us. Further with hundreds of millions of people online in the US for example, you only need a small small percentage of people who feel they have nothing to lose by being nasty as can be or worse when they comment on the White House Facebook Page or a local news story about Somali immigrants in Minnesota for example. On top of this, with Twitter and Facebook profiles, the masses now have public calling cards on the Internet which makes it 100x easier for anyone to be privately contacted or publicly shamed. Previously only a small percentage of individual people had websites or blogs. So back to crafting another way ... that is what I am seeing on the best Facebook Groups. Active facilitators, participants respecting those leaders, and removing the abusers, spammers, or those unwilling or unable (can be tied to severe antisocial behavioral medical conditions) to follow the rules or get along with others. So to those looking to connect non-friends online be bold and build another way. To those orgs who sponsor online exchange, start investing in what really works - people as active leaders and facilitators. Steven Clift E-Democracy P.S. For orgs looking for great professional online facilitators who can handle politics, I can hook you up. From: "Andrew Whitacre" <awhit@mit.edu> Date: Jan 19, 2017 8:52 AM Subject: [civicmedia-researchers] CFP: Abusive Language Online To: <cmsw-all@mit.edu>, "civicmedia-researchers" < civicmedia-researchers@mit.edu> Cc: Part of the annual meeting of the Association of Computational Linguistics 2017 (Vancouver), August 3rd (or) 4th, 2017 https://www.hastac.org​/opportunities​/cfp​-1st​-workshop​-abusive​-language​- online Snippet: Overview The last few years have seen a surge in abusive online behavior, with governments, social media platforms, and individuals struggling to cope with the consequences. Online forums, comment sections, and social media interaction in general have become a playground of bullying, scapegoating, and hate speech. These forms of online aggression not only poison the social climate of the communities that experience it, but also lower the inhibition for direct physical violence, and increasingly even result in it. As a field that directly works with computing over language, Natural Language Processing researchers are in a unique position to develop automated methods to analyse, detect, and filter abusive language. Additionally, we recognize that addressing abusive language is not solely the purview of NLP approaches but is a truly multi-disciplinary problem and thus requires knowledge from other fields, including but not limited to: psychology, sociology, law, gender studies, digital communication, and critical race theory. In this one day workshop, we aim to provide a space for researchers of various disciplines to meet and discuss approaches to abusive language. The workshop will include invited speakers and panelists from fields outside of NLP, as well as solicit papers from researchers across all areas. In addition, the workshop will host an "unshared task". Paper Topics We invite long and short papers on any of the following general topics: - NLP models and methods for abusive language detection - Application of NLP tools to analyze social media content and other large data sets - NLP models for cross-lingual abusive language detection - The social and personal consequences of being the target of abusive language and targeting others with abusive language - Assessment of current non-NLP methods of addressing abusive language - Legal ramifications of measures taken against abusive language use - Best practices for using NLP techniques in watchdog settings - Development of corpora and annotation guidelines Panel Discussion Topics Potential panel discussion topics reflect the relevance for industry and individuals: - Responsibility of companies and governments in monitoring speech - Privacy and ethical implications of abusive language detection (false positives) - Follow-up: what to do when a community experiences abusive language - Personal experiences from individuals who have been threatened online - Best methods for cross-pollination of ideas between fields Andrew Whitacre Communications Director Comparative Media Studies/Writing Massachusetts Institute of Technology (snips) | cmsw.mit.edu