Dear colleagues,

We're editing a special journal issue for Policy & Internet to be published in 
late 2015. The entire call for paper is posted below, which can also be 
accessed here: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news/?id=1128 Should you have questions, 
please feel free to contact the guest editors.

Thanks!

Min

____________________________________________________________________

Min Jiang (Ph.D. Purdue), Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Affiliate Faculty, International Studies
Coordinator, College Diversity 
Program<http://clas.uncc.edu/about-us/diversity>, College of Liberal Arts & 
Sciences
Co-coordinator, Digital Arts<http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/DAST/>, 
<http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/DAST/> Sciences & Technologies 
(DAST)<http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/DAST/>
5011 Colvard N., UNCC, 9201 University City Blvd. Charlotte, NC 28223
704-687-0768 | [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> | 
Web<http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/min-jiang/>site<http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/min-jiang/>
 | Twitter<http://www.twitter.com/mindyjiang> | 
LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/minjiang>

Research Affiliate
Center for Global Communication Studies, University of Pennsylvania
_____________________________________________________________________

Call for Papers: Policy & Internet Special Issue on Social Data Science and the 
Chinese Web

23 June 2014 Oxford Internet Institute


Policy and 
Internet<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-2866>, 
the first major peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary journal investigating the 
impact of the Internet on public policy, is inviting submissions for a special 
issue on the development of social data science in China - the use of 
innovative data science tools, methods and big data in order to advance 
research on the Chinese Internet and society. The issue will be published in 
late 2015. The paper submission deadline is 1 March 2015.

Outline

There are over 600 million Chinese-language Internet users today, and 
increasing Chinese participation marks an important expansion and shift in the 
global network of the Web. Massive datasets that track the daily interactions 
of Internet users are relatively more accessible than ever before, and Chinese 
web data - including user-generated content, and data on user activity and 
behaviour - has attracted much attention from the political, academic, and 
commercial sectors. As the burgeoning field of data science expands to include 
the analysis of big data generated from the Web to understand the social world, 
it is increasingly important to incorporate methodological development, insight 
and comparative analysis from research communities across the world, 
particularly China.


Uncovering what the digital world reveals about online/offline interactions and 
collective dynamics requires researchers to operate at the intersection of 
cutting-edge methods to parse and manage large data sets; as well as to take 
into account privacy concerns and policies that regulate online behavior. Users 
of Chinese Web data - not only academic researchers but also industry and 
government institutions, both inside and outside China - have varied resources, 
expertise and purposes in creating, hosting, collecting, and analysing these 
data. They face a range of methodological, ethical and practical concerns and 
challenges regarding the intensive use (and misuse) of the data. This special 
issue will address how current research efforts navigate these issues, and the 
methods deployed to overcome limitations.


The issue responds to the need for an informed and broader discussion on the 
development of data science based on the Chinese Web, and what it reveals about 
large-scale social dynamics as well as microscopic patterns of interpersonal 
communication. This is an important and timely discussion not only for Chinese 
Internet researchers, but also for the larger audience of researchers and 
policy makers interested in using data science methods and web-based big data 
to understand the social world. While the Chinese Web represents an increasing 
share of the global web, it has received significantly less attention than 
Western services and online platforms in the growing field of social data 
science, or computational social science. This special issue aims to fill that 
gap.


We invite high quality empirical and evidence-based research articles that 
showcase the theoretical and methodological tools that are being applied to 
uncover the user, business, and policy practices around the Chinese Web. We 
welcome articles that discuss the peculiarities of Chinese data, the analytical 
approaches required to analyze online behavior, and the theoretical questions 
that those data and methods help tackle. The journal is fully 
multi-disciplinary in scope, and perspectives from any academic discipline are 
welcomed, provided that the papers consider the policy implications of the 
research discussed and are motivated by compelling questions.


Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

  *   Systematic review or meta-analysis of recent research on data science 
using Chinese Web data. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) 
e-commerce, collective action, and individual online behavior.
  *   Theoretical analysis of policy and regulatory practices of Chinese Web 
data, including Chinese government policies towards Web data.
  *   Analysis of the big data industry in China, including Chinese Internet 
companies or social media platforms' data policies and practices.
  *   The use of data science and big data in policy making, public opinion 
analysis, forecasting and city planning in China.
  *   Case studies leveraging Web data and data science tools to explore 
China's social, political, economic, and cultural issues and their policy 
implications (e.g. online communities, social movement, foreign affairs, 
economic activities, and cultural identities). Also, ethical concerns regarding 
data ownership, production, collection, management, manipulation, consumption 
and sharing in China.
  *   Methodological innovations in data collection, management and 
interpretation (e.g. big data vs small data, analysis of contextual and 
behavioral data, privacy management, etc.).
  *   The social, political, economic, and cultural impact of Web data research 
in China, including implications for knowledge production, and new digital 
divides based on access to and knowledge about big data.
  *   Analysis of the potentials (e.g. better tools, services, and public 
goods) and perils (e.g. privacy incursions, invasive marketing, political 
surveillance) of big data in China.
  *   Comparative approaches to data science using Chinese and Western Web 
data, such as Google vs Baidu, Twitter vs Weibo, Facebook vs Renren, or 
Whatsapp vs Wechat.

Paper Submissions

The online submission deadline for papers is 1 March 2015. Please indicate in a 
cover note that the paper is intended for the special issue. Papers can be 
submitted though the journal's online submission 
form<http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/poi>. Authors are advised to consult the 
journal's guide for 
authors<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291944-2866/homepage/ForAuthors.html>
 before submitting their paper.

About the Guest Editors

King-wa Fu<http://sites.google.com/site/fukingwa/> (Ph.D.) is Assistant 
Professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC), The University of 
Hong Kong. His research focuses on social media in China, political 
participation and media use, computational media studies, and mental 
health/suicide and the media, and statistics for journalism. He has a PhD from 
the JMSC, a MA in Social Sciences and an MPhil in Engineering from the Hong 
Kong University of Science and Technology. He was a journalist at the Hong Kong 
Economic Journal.


Min Jiang<http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/min-jiang/> (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor 
of Communication at UNC Charlotte and an Affiliate Researcher at the Center for 
Global Communication Studies, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses 
on Chinese Internet technologies, politics, and policies. She has published 
nearly 20 journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings. Her 
research has appeared in New Media & Society, Social Computer Science Review, 
Policy & Internet, Electronic Journal of Communication, and Information 
Visualization, among others. A recipient of over two dozen research grants, she 
has received funding from and presented her work at various institutions 
including the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), The University of Oxford, 
Harvard University, and University of Pennsylvania.


<http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=279>

Ning Wang<http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=279> (Ph.D) works as a Researcher 
at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Prior to Oxford, he was 
a postdoctoral researcher at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. 
His work involves in using computational and Big Data approaches to analyse a 
wide range of sociotechnical problems. His research interests lie in the broad 
area of social computing, data mining, social networks analysis, Chinese 
Internet and social media, among others. He has been working recently on a 
range of projects on open data and civic engagement; big data for social 
science research; online activism; and using Twitter to map and measure online 
cultural diffusion. His research has appeared in Elsevier Journal of Social 
Networks, Entropy, etc.


<http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=123>

Han-Teng Liao<http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=123> examines how geographic 
and linguistic factors (humanities and social science) and hyperlinked web data 
(webometrics and information science) shape the sense of "fellow users" in 
digital networked environments. With more than twelve years of combined 
information science, media/communication and open source/open data working 
experience, his focus has been on user-generated content and data, Web 
analytics (webometrics), Chinese Internet Research and integrated research 
designs (both qualitative and quantitative). He enjoys networking with 
professionals on the geographic and linguistic growth / dynamics / exchanges of 
the Internet. He holds an MSc in Computer Science and Information Engineering, 
an MA in Journalism, a BSc in Electrical Engineering and a BA in Foreign 
Languages and Literatures. At the Oxford Internet Institute, University of 
Oxford, his PhD project compares two Chinese user-contributed encyclopedias, 
Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike.

Contact information

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 1 St Giles Oxford OX1 3JS, 
United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0)1865 287210 Fax: +44 (0)1865 287211 Email: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

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