The 8th International Conference on Behavioral and Social Computing (BESC 2021) will be a Virtual Conference, hosted by Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar 29-31 October 2021. BESC conference aims to become a premier forum in which academic researchers and industry practitioners from artificial intelligence, computational social sciences, natural language processing, business and marketing, and behavioral and psychological sciences could present updated research efforts and progresses on foundational and emerging interdisciplinary topics of BESC, exchange new ideas and identify future research directions. Following the successful BESC2014 in Shanghai, China, BESC2015 in Nanjing, China, BESC2016 in Durham, NC, USA, BESC2017 in Krakow, Poland, BESC2018 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, BESC2019 in Beijing, China, BESC2020 in Bournemouth, UK, BESC 2021 will take place in Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar.

Submission Guidelines

The BESC Organizing Committee invites submissions of applied or theoretical research and application-oriented papers on any below topics as well as two special sessions and a Doctoral Symposium track.

All submissions should use IEEE two-column style. Templates are available from http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html

Paper submission system is available at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=besc2021

  • All papers must be submitted electronically through the paper submission system in PDF format only. BESC 2021 accepts research papers (6 pages), special session papers (6 pages) and Doctoral Symposium papers (4 pages).
  • The page count above excludes the references.
  • Paper review will be double-blind, and submissions not properly anonymized will be desk-rejected without review.
  • Submitted papers must not substantially overlap with papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal or a conference with proceedings.
  • Papers must be clearly submitted in English and will be selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation.
  • Submission of a paper should be regarded as a commitment that, should the paper be accepted, at least one of the authors will register and attend the conference to present the work.
    • All accepted papers will be included in IEEE Xplore and indexed by EI. Top-quality papers after presented in the conference will be selected for extension and publication in several special issues of international journals, e.g., World Wide Web Journal (Springer), Web Intelligence, and Social Network Analysis and Mining (Springer).

    List of Topics

    Social Computing, Computational Social Science and Applications

  • Computational models of social phenomena
  • Social behavior
  • Social network analysis
  • Semantic web
  • Collective intelligence
  • Security, privacy, trust in social contexts
  • Social recommendation
  • Social influence and social contagions
  • Quantifying offline phenomena through online data
  • Forecasting of social phenomena
  • Science and technology studies approaches to computational social science
  • Social media and health behaviors
  • Social psychology and personality
  • New theories, methods, and objectives in computational social science

    • Digital Humanities

  • Digital media
  • Digital humanities
  • Digital games and learning
  • Digital footprints and privacy
  • Crowd dynamics
  • Digital arts
  • Digital healthcare
  • Activity streams and experience design
  • Virtual communities (e.g., open-source, multiplayer gaming, etc.)

    • Natural Language Processing

  • Web mining and its social interpretations
  • Sentiment Analysis, Stylistic Analysis, and Argument Mining
  • Opinion mining and social media analytics
  • Credibility of online content
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Mining big social data
  • Cognitive Modeling and Psycholinguistics

    • Information Management and Information Systems (IS)

  • Decision analytics
  • E-Business
  • Decision analytics
  • Computational finance
  • Societal impacts of IS
  • Human behavior and IS
  • IS in healthcare
  • IS security and privacy
  • IS strategy, structure and organizational impacts
  • Service science and IS

    • Behavior and User Modelling, Privacy, and Ethics

  • Behavior change
  • Positive technology
  • Personalization for individuals, groups and populations
  • Large scale personalization, adaptation and recommendation
  • Web dynamics and personalization
  • Privacy, perceived security and trust
  • Technology and Wellbeing
  • Ethics of computational research on human behavior

    • This year, we also welcome submissions to two special sessions and a Doctoral Symposium track:

  • Special Session 1 - Covid-19 and Social Computing

    • We call for papers focusing on the relation between Computing and Social Psychology in the context of Covid-19. This includes papers relating to usage of social media and all aspects of social behaviour in the online world in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Special Session 2 - Psychology for Cyber Security

    • Papers for this session will focus on how psychology can be applied to cybersecurity. A wide range of aspects of this topic are welcomed, which encompass understanding the motivations of hackers and the social context in which they operate, and how psychology can be applied to protect individuals and organisations from cyber attacks.

  • Doctoral Symposium track

    • The BESC 2021 Doctoral Symposium aims to provide a supportive environment that enables doctoral students to get constructive feedback on their research. Students will have the opportunity to discuss their work with experienced members in the interdisciplinary field of behavioral and social computing. The BESC doctoral symposium covers the same research topics as the conference. The Doctoral Symposium track has its own important dates, please consult the Doctoral Symposium track website for more details.

    ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

    Conference Chair
    Raian Ali, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Steering Committee Chair
    Guandong Xu, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
    Program Committee Chairs
    Wajdi Zaghouani, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Xiaohui Tao, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
    Lin Li,Wuhan University of Technology, China
    Special Session Chair
    Hao Chen, Nankai University, China
    Emily Arden Close, Bournemouth University, UK
    Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs
    Aiman Mohmood M. Erbad, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Barbara Caci, University of Palermo, Italy
    Panel and Tutorial Chair
    George Mikros, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Anke Gorzig University of Greenwich, UK
    Procedding Chair
    Xujuan Zhou, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
    Web Chair
    Xiangguo Sun, Southeast University, China
    Publicity Chair
    Md Rafiqul Islam, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
    Sameha Al-Shakhsi, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Khansa Chemnad, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Local Organizers
    Tarek S. Eldebsi, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar
    Ezzeddine A. Ben Abdennebi, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar

    CONTACTS

    All inquiries about the conference, including submissions, can be directed to the organising committee: [email protected]
    For inquiries specific to the special sessions, please Emily Arden-Close: [email protected]