📣 CALL FOR PAPERS 📣

We are organizing the 1st International Workshop on Science-Related Discourse on the Web (SDW’26) which is collocated with ACM Web Science Conference 2026 from 26-29 May at Braunschweig, Germany. Check out the website!

In recent years, a growing number of people have been engaging in science-related discussions on online platforms. This typically informal and sometimes decontextualized discourse may result in oversimplification, misinterpretation or instrumentalization of scientific knowledge. Analyzing such discourse is challenging: it differs from general online talk, spans multiple platforms, and requires interdisciplinary methods.

This workshop provides a venue for interdisciplinary exchange on computational and social‑scientific approaches and resources to platform‑specific and cross‑platform analysis of science-related communication. This includes methods for platform-specific and cross-platform data extraction, processing and classification as well as social scientific insights into science-related communication on the Web e.g., its characteristics, evolution, impact, and possible societal effects.

💻 WORKSHOP TOPICS 💻

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• (Cross-platform-) crawling approaches for science-related discourse
• Methods for the detection and filtering of science-related online discourse data
• Issues and methods related to tracking/linking of users and messages within and across different platforms (e.g., X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads)
• Practical/legal/ethical issues concerning data access
• Detection of arguments, claims, evidence, sources, or stances in science-related online discourse data
• Classification of scientific claims w.r.t. verifiability, credibility, or veracity (including distinguishing different types of misinformation such as oversimplification)
• Analysis of science-related discourse on social media platforms and in online news
• Assessment of the expertness of social media users (e.g., scientist, expert, lay person)
• Classification of sources w.r.t. credibility, political leaning, and other biases
• Usage of social media platforms (e.g., X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads) by different user groups
• Usage of memes in science-related discourse on social media
• Analysis of LLM-generated text in science-related discourse
• Usage of preprints and open access publications in science-related Web discourse

🎯SUBMISSIONS🎯

We invite contributions from Computer Science, Computational Social Science, Communication Science, Science Communication, Media and Communication Studies, Information Science, Computational Linguistics and related fields. We accept both technical and non technical submissions, including research papers (completed or in progress and unpublished work), annotated datasets, questionnaires, novel data collections, tools, and other resources. Emphasis is placed on discussion and exchange of ideas, thus we welcome submissions of work in progress.

• full papers (6 – 10 pages, including references, appendices, etc.),
• short papers (up to 5 pages including references, appendices, etc.),
• extended abstracts for posters and demos (up to 2 pages including references, appendices, etc.).

All accepted contributions except extended abstracts will be part of the WebSci’26 workshop proceedings, which will be published in a companion volume in the ACM Digital Library. Submission of all papers is electronic, using the EasyChair conference management system: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sdw26

Please find more information on the workshop website

⏰Important Dates⏰

• 🗓️ Papers due: March 17, 2026 (extension likely)
• 🗓️ Paper notifications: March 31, 2026
• 🗓️ Paper camera-ready versions due: April 14, 2026
• 🗓️ Workshop: May 26, 2026

We look forward to your contributions!

👥 Workshop organizers 👥

👤Katarina Boland (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany)

👤Dimitar Dimitrov (GESIS, Germany)

👤Michelle Riedlinger (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia)

👤Philipp Meier (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany)

👤Sebastian Schellhammer (GESIS, Germany)

👤Stefan Dietze (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf & GESIS, Germany)

✉️ Contact ✉️

• 📧 dimitar[PUNCTdimitrov[at]gesis[PUNCT]org
• 📧 katarina[PUNCT]boland[at]hhu.de

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