The 8th International Conference on Behavioral and Social Computing
(BESC 2021) will take place as a VIRTUAL CONFERENCE hosted by Hamad Bin Khalifa University, 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 online as a virtual conference hosted by Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar.

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.

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TOPICS OF INTEREST
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Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* 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.)

* 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

* 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

* 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.

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IMPORTANT DATES
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Submission of papers: 30 Jul 2021
Acceptance notification: 15 Sep 2021
Conference date: 29-31 Oct 2021
Main track camera ready: 5 Oct 2021

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PAPER SUBMISSION AND PROCEDDINGS
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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).

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ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
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* 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

* 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

* Proceeding Chair
Xujuan Zhou, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

* 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

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CONTACTS
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All inquiries about the conference, including submissions, can be directed to the organising committee:
* ieee.besc@gmail.com

For inquiries specific to the special sessions, please contact:
* Emily Arden-Close (eardenclose@bournemouth.ac.uk)