CONFERENCE FOR TRUTH AND TRUST ONLINE

(Virtual) October 16-17, 2020


CALL FOR PAPERS

*** Motivation ***

The modern media ecosystem in which the public seeks truthful
information and trustworthy sources is increasingly dominated by
large-scale online social media and communication platforms
(e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) as well as messaging apps,
which operate alongside traditional news sources. However, at
the same time, this hybrid ecosystem is plagued with people’s
lack of trust in both content and sources, harassment and hate
speech, as well as misinformation and deliberate efforts to spread
disinformation.

The quest to improve the online media ecosystem remains
extremely important and is in need of concerted research efforts;
now more than ever, as the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, the world is in two battles at once: one against the
pandemic and another one against the first global infodemic. The
latter is ranked second in terms of importance on the list of World
Health Organisation’s focus areas, with dangers ranging from
promoting fake cures, rumours and conspiracy theories, to
disinformation and panic.

The mission of the Conference on Truth and Trust Online (TTO),
now in its second edition, is to bring together all parties working
toward improving the truthfulness and trustworthiness of online
communications. TTO is an annual forum for academia, industry,
non-profit organizations, and other stakeholders to discuss the
problems facing (social) media platforms and technical solutions
to understand and address them.

Given the ongoing travel restrictions, this year’s conference will
be virtual, taking place online on October 16-17, 2020. Details on
participation and registration will be announced in due course.

Overall, the intended outcomes of our conference are the
following: (i) for academics, to learn about the real problems that
industry is facing and how their proposed solutions can be more
impactful, (ii) for industry, to improve their product safety by
brainstorming collective actions together with other stakeholders,
and (iii) for the public, to gain insights into how their concerns on
social media safety are being addressed.


*** Call for Papers and Talk Proposals ***

We invite submissions of both technical papers and talk proposals
(see below for details) on technical solutions for addressing
current challenges facing social media platforms on the following
indicative list of topics:

- Misinformation
- Disinformation
- Trustworthiness of COVID-19 news and guidance
- Hate speech
- Online harassment and cyberbullying
- Credibility
- Hyper-partisanship and bias
- Image/video verification
- Image/video verification
- Fake amplification
- Fake reviews
- Polarization and echo chambers
- Transparency in content and source moderation
- Privacy requirements

The focus of the conference is on identifying what new problems
and technical solutions we need to work on, rather than
incremental solutions to what we are doing already.

We invite two types of submissions: technical papers and talk
proposals:

* Technical papers [August 1, 2020] should contain novel,
previously unpublished material related to the topics of the
conference and should be limited to 8 pages with unlimited pages
for references. Papers should be technical in nature; for instance,
authors seeking to publish a position/option paper should rather
submit a talk proposal, possibly be accompanied by a blog post.
The papers accepted will be presented either orally or as posters.
Authors will be able to opt out from inclusion of accepted papers
in the TTO proceedings, e.g., if they plan to publish their work
elsewhere. Double submissions are allowed, but they should be
declared as a footnote on the first page of the paper.

* Talk proposals [August 15, 2020] should be 2 pages long,
describing the content of a roughly 20-minute talk (the actual
length will be determined based on program constraints). We
invite submissions from scholars, activists, developers, lawyers,
ethics experts, fact-checkers, public servants, journalists, and all
around researchers. TTO attracts world-renowned experts: if you
are excited to give a talk to such a group, and you think they
would be excited to hear it, then you should submit a proposal.

Both papers and talk proposals will be judged by at least two
program committee members. Submissions need to follow the
provided TTO template, which is also available in Overleaf.


*** Key dates ***

- Paper submission deadline: August 1, 2020
- Talk proposal submission deadline: August 15, 2020
- Notification of acceptance for both papers and talk proposals:
September 15, 2020
- Submit videos for the talks: October 5, 2020
- (Virtual) Conference: October 16-17, 2020

Please note that the deadlines are final and will NOT be extended.


*** Participation ***

We encourage wide participation from all interested parties and
stakeholders on online media, including academics, startups and
large industry, non-profit organizations and governmental
institutions.