Last call for the Program Committee for JITP 2011 in Seattle at UW

*(DRAFT) CALL FOR PAPERS*

May 16 & 17, 2011
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

The 3rd annual, two-day *Journal of Information Technology & Politics* (*
JITP*)* *thematic conference will be in Seattle, Washington, coordinated by
the Department of Political Science and the Center for American Politics and
Public Policy (CAPPP) at the University of Washington.

*
APPROACH*

Computational social science is an emergent field and source of new
theoretical and methodological innovation for social science more broadly.
Multidisciplinary teams of social and computer scientists are increasingly
common in the lab and at workshops where cross-fertilization occurs in the
areas of theory, data, methods, and tools. Peer-reviewed interdisciplinary
work is becoming more common, where the computational tools and techniques
of computer science are being used by social scientists directly.
Previously, large-scale computational processing was the purview of
expensive university-centric computing labs. Now, with the democratization
of technology, universities, non-profits, and for-profit firms increasingly
provide large amounts of cheap computing power to researchers and citizens
alike.

It is the potential of these new computational technologies and related
Web-based platforms for research, politics, and governance that led to the
creation of the *Journal of Information Technology & Politics*. Previous
special issues on "Text Annotation for Political Science" 5(1), "Politics:
Web 2.0" 6(3/4), "YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States"
7(2/3), and "The Politics of Open Source" (*in production*) have focused the
attention of researchers on the expansive new landscape of digital democracy
as well as the architecture and tools that underpin it.

In their 2009 *Science* article, David Lazer and colleagues highlighted some
of the future challenges for scholars working in this area. "Computational
social science could become the exclusive domain of private companies and
government agencies. Alternatively, there might emerge a privileged set of
academic researchers presiding over private data from which they produce
papers that cannot be critiqued or replicated. Neither scenario will serve
the long-term public interest of accumulating, verifying, and disseminating
knowledge." Luckily, the phenomenon of computational social science is
distributed so widely and found in such variety that these scenarios are
unlikely. The trends towards openness and data and tool sharing are notable
breakthroughs in a sphere where proprietary approaches dominate. Data,
method and tool transparency are watchwords for governments and researchers
alike.

With this background in mind, we invite a wide range of paper submissions on
the future of computational social science. Submissions may include, but are
not limited to:

   - Applications of Information theory to social science research
   - Methodologies and tools for studying users and information on social
   media services
   - Projects featuring novel uses of computer assisted qualitative data
   analysis software (CAQDAS)
   - Empirical analysis and modeling
   - Web technologies and data mining
   - Interdisciplinary methodologies in collaborative research
   - Pedagogical issues in computational social science
   - Computer simulations in political science education and training
   - Concepts from social sciences enhanced by computation, such as social
   network analysis (SNA)
   - Innovation in socio-technical network and infrastructure analysis

*
*

*PAPER SUBMISSIONS*

Authors are invited to prepare and submit to *JITP* a research paper, policy
viewpoint, workbench note, and teaching innovation manuscript by January 1,
2011. Proposals for full panel presentations will also be accepted. Please
contact the conference manager to discuss panels. Papers accepted for
publication will be invited to revise and resubmit their articles for
publication in a special issue, or double issue, of *JITP*.

Authors should "establish membership" at the JITP website,
http://www.jitp.net, to submit a paper. Follow the instructions for regular
article submissions, being sure to indicate that the paper is for JITP2011
in the comments section.

Papers will be put through an expedited, blind peer review process by the
Program Committee, and authors will be notified about a decision by March 1,
2011. A small number of papers will be accepted for presentation at the
conference. Other paper authors will be invited to present a poster during
the Friday evening reception.

*
BEST PAPER AND POSTER CASH PRIZES*

The author (or authors) of the best research paper will receive a cash
prize. The creator (or creators) of the best poster/research presentation
will also receive a cash prize.

* *

*PROGRAM COMMITTEE*

Gil ad Ariely, Lauder School of Government Diplomacy and Strategy,
Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya

David M. Berry, Swansea University, UK.

Chris Bronk, Rice University

Muzammil M. Hussain, University of Washington

Daniel Katz, Fellow, University of Michigan, Center for the Study of Complex
Systems

Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech

Georgios Lappas, Technological Educational Institution of Western Macedonia,
Greece

Azi Lev-On, Ariel University Center

Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano, Argonne National Laboratory and the University
of Chicago

Bruce Neubauer, Albany State University

Andre Oboler, Monash University, Australia

Joseph W. Roberts, Roger Williams University

Derek Ruths, McGill University

Chirag Shah, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair

Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University, UK

John Wilkerson, University of Washington, co-chair


--
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
University of Massachusetts Amherst
200 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003

http://people.umass.edu/stu/
stu@polsci.umass.edu
413-545-5375

Editor, Journal of Information Technology and Politics
http://www.jitp.net

Director, QDAP-UMass
http://www.umass.edu/qdap/

Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government
http://www.umass.edu/digitalcenter/