<div dir="ltr"><div class=""><h3></h3><h3><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The Grand Data Challenge of the 2015 International
Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling & Prediction</span></h3><h3>Overview</h3></div>
<p>
This year's SBP Grand Challenge problem asks participants to consider the following
question, "how can we use publicly available data on the web and elsewhere to find
social inequality and to aid the disadvantaged?"
</p>
<p>
>From the Arab Spring to the recent Gamergate scandal, the use of social media in
understanding and mitigating social inequalities and prejudice has increased at a
rapid pace. At the same time, data used for decades to study the ways in which
social inequalities permeate every facet of social structure have become increasingly
accessible. While many have taken advantage of these resources to produce new
and interesting approaches to understanding social inequalities and ways to prevent
them, there is much interesting and useful work still to be done. For example, the
following questions may be of interest:
</p>
<ul><li>How are stereotypes of disadvantaged individuals perpetuated in social media?</li><li>How do differing levels of Internet access affect the presence and attitude of individuals online?</li><li>How has the distribution of poverty changed over time as American
cities have grown, and how has this affected the impoverished population
in a negative or positive way?</li></ul>
<p>
These are by no means the only questions of interest, and are only intended to give a
rough idea of what might be an interesting topic to explore for this challenge
problem.
</p>
<div class=""><h3>Submission</h3></div>
<p>
All submissions must be in the form of a 4-6 page single column paper with a
minimum font size of 10. Note that only the abstract will be included in the
proceedings, and thus should not conflict with any concurrent or future submissions
of this work to other venues. Submissions will be judged by a based on their novelty,
adherence to relevant social science literature, and technical rigor.
</p>
<p>All submissions must be made to our submission site,
<a href="https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sbpgdc2015">https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sbpgdc2015</a></p>
<div class=""><h3>Important Dates</h3></div>
<ul><li>Paper Submission January 20th, 2015</li><li>Winner Notification February 28th, 2015</li><li>SBP 2015 Conference March 31st – April 3rd, 2015</li></ul>
<div class=""><h3>Prizes</h3></div>
<b>To Be Determined</b>
<p>
Last year, the winner received a cash prize as well as a travel reimbursement to
present their work at the conference. This year will likely be much the same. We will
update this portion when the prizes have been finalized.
</p>
<div class=""><h3>Example Datasets</h3></div>
<p>
We have provided some sample datasets to get contestants started on their
submissions. These datasets are merely intended to provide a starting point, and are
not required for the submission. Contestants are encouraged to provide their own
datasets for the community. All of the datasets that follow are available on the SBP
Grand Challenge website (<a href="http://sbp-conference.org/challenge/">http://sbp-conference.org/challenge/</a>):
</p>
<ul><li><b>Ferguson Protests</b> - Tweets pertaining to 2014 protest activity in Ferguson,
Missouri. Contains 1.1M Tweets 7-14 days after the first protests. We'll have
Tweet IDs up for this dataset within two weeks.
</li><li><b>Census Data</b> - The US Census department provides an API
(<a href="http://www.census.gov/developers/">http://www.census.gov/developers/</a>) to quickly access large volumes of census data.
</li><li><b>Gamergate</b> - Tweets pertaining to the Gamergate scandal collected by Andy
Baio for his article about the incident (<a href="http://bit.ly/medium-gamergate">http://bit.ly/medium-gamergate</a>).
</li><li><b>Social Computing Repository</b> - Contains data from a collection of social
media sites including Digg, Foursquare, and Twitter. Data can be obtained
from (<a href="http://socialcomputing.asu.edu/">http://socialcomputing.asu.edu/</a>).
</li></ul>
<div class=""><h3>Questions</h3></div>
<p>
Please direct all questions to the SBP Grand Challenge Committee at <a href="mailto:sbp-2015-grand-challenge-group@googlegroups.com">sbp-2015-grand-challenge-group@googlegroups.com</a>
</p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">Kang Zhao, Ph.D. <br>Tippie College of Business<br>The University of Iowa<br><br>Website: <a href="http://www.kangzhao.net" target="_blank">http://www.kangzhao.net</a><br></div>
</div>