*** First Call for Papers ***

We invite paper submissions to the 9th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH), which will take place on July 31/August 1 at ACL 2025.

Website: https://www.workshopononlineabuse.com/cfp.html

Important Dates

Submission due: March 7, 2025
ARR reviewed submission due: April 10, 2025
Notification of acceptance: April 17, 2025
Camera-ready papers due: May 16, 2025
Workshop: July 31st - August 1st, 2025


Overview

Digital technologies have brought significant benefits to society, transforming how people connect, communicate, and interact. However, these same technologies have also enabled the widespread dissemination and amplification of abusive and harmful content, such as hate speech, harassment, and misinformation. Given the sheer volume of content shared online, addressing abuse and harm at scale requires the use of computational tools. Yet, detecting and moderating online abuse remains a complex task, fraught with technical, social, legal, and ethical challenges.

The 9th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) invites paper submissions from a diverse range of fields, including but not limited to natural language processing, machine learning, computational social science, law, political science, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies. We explicitly encourage interdisciplinary research, technical and non-technical contributions, and submissions that focus on under-resourced languages. Non-archival papers and civil society reports are also welcome.

Topics covered by WOAH include, but are not limited to:

New models or methods for detecting abusive and harmful online content, including misinformation;
Biases and limitations in existing detection models or datasets for abusive and harmful content, especially those in commercial use;
Development of new datasets and taxonomies for online abuse and harms;
Novel evaluation metrics and procedures for detecting harmful content;
Analyses of the dynamics of online abuse, its propagation, and its impact on different communities;
Social, legal, and ethical considerations in detecting, monitoring, and moderating online abuse.

Special Theme: Harms Beyond Hate Speech
In its 9th edition, WOAH highlights the theme Harms Beyond Hate Speech. We aim to expand the conversation beyond conventional definitions of harmful content by exploring the nuanced ways online harms manifest—such as technologically mediated inauthentic behavior, the power of technologies to reshape perceptions and opinions, and their potential to incite discrimination, hostility, violence, or even genocide. Additionally, we emphasize the diverse targets affected by such harms and the unique considerations computational interventions demand.

To facilitate this exploration, we invite NLP researchers, social scientists, cultural scholars, and practitioners to engage with key issues, including child sexual abuse material, radicalization, misinformation, platform policies, security, and the politics of computational approaches. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, our goal is to deepen understanding of these complex phenomena and advance effective, ethical solutions
Submission

Submission is electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system.

Submission link: TBA

The workshop will accept three types of papers:

1) Academic Papers (long and short): Long papers of up to 8 pages, excluding references, and short papers of up to 4 pages, excluding references. Unlimited pages for references and appendices. Accepted papers will be given an additional page of content to address reviewer comments. Previously published papers cannot be accepted.

2) Non-Archival Submissions: Up to 2 pages, excluding references, to summarise and showcase in-progress work and work published elsewhere.

3) Civil Society Reports: Non-archival submissions, with a minimum of 2 pages and no upper limit. Can include work published elsewhere.

All submissions must use the official ACL style files. Submissions that do not conform to the required styles, including paper size, margin width, and font size restrictions, will be rejected without review. All submissions should adhere to the workshop policies https://www.workshopononlineabuse.com/policies.html.
WOAH Community

We are excited to share the WOAH community Slack channel — a workspace for researchers interested in or working on understanding and addressing online abuse and harms!

Join us here: https://join.slack.com/t/hatespeechdet-47d7560/shared_invite/zt-2a8d96j4z-gkNk_aLrliUK4NxA8woqIw
Contact Info

Please send any questions about the workshop to organizers@workshopononlineabuse.com



Organisers

Agostina Calabrese, University of Edinburgh

Christine de Kock, University of Melbourne

Debora Nozza, Bocconi University

Flor Miriam Plaza-del-Arco, Bocconi University

Zeerak Talat, University of Edinburgh

Francielle Vargas, University of São Paulo




The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.