Call for Papers

Combating Health Misinformation for Social Wellbeing

Workshop @ ICWSM 2023, the 17th International Conference on Web and Social Media

June 5th – 8th 2023, Limassol, Cyprus

Scope and topics

In recent years, people have increasingly referred to the Web and social media as sources of information about health-related problems and solutions, as confirmed by the U.S. Pew Research Center, and other European and international studies. Although, on the one hand, these platforms favor easier and more direct access to information sources by users without the intermediation of experts, on the other hand, it is precisely such democratization of health information that constitutes a potential danger for people. As we have seen especially in the last period, linked to the pandemic, the proliferation of false information, conspiracy theories, and unreliable remedies risk compromising the health not only of individuals, but that of the community as a whole.

It is in this perspective that it becomes necessary to study and propose technological solutions to help users come into contact with genuine information, especially in a critical domain such as health, for social wellbeing.

To this end, it is essential to promote research of an interdisciplinary nature, involving computer scientists, physicians, lawyers, and communication experts who can address the problem of health misinformation from different points of view by combining their expertise.

The topics of interest of the TrueHealth 2023 Workshop at ICWSM include, but are not limited to:

  • Assessing the genuineness of Online Health Information (OHI);
  • Consumer Health Search (CHS) and genuine information access;
  • Debunking health misinformation;
  • Fake news/rumors and healthcare;
  • Measures, evaluation methods, and datasets for health misinformation detection;
  • Health misinformation detection;
  • Health literacy and information genuineness;
  • Fact-checking in Online Health Information (OHI);
  • Misinformation and public opinion on health;
  • Relationship between access to non-genuine information and danger to public health; 
  • Relationship between psychological characteristics and perceptions of health misinformation;
  • Techniques for accessing and retrieving genuine Online Health Information (OHI).

Submission Instructions

We welcome both 2-page abstracts, as well as Long (8 pages) and Short (4 pages) papers – excluding references (11 pages max with references and ethics statement). Abstracts are ideal as Demo or Position papers, Short papers as presentations of ongoing research with preliminary results or summaries of previous work, and Long papers as presentations of novel research and results.

Long and Short papers will be published in ICWSM Workshop Proceedings (http://workshop-proceedings.icwsm.org/).

All submissions should be double-blind.

Papers have to follow the AAAI format, as outlined here: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/aaai-2023-author-kit/wxnmhzcrjbpc

Submit here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=truehealth2023

Other ICWSM submission instructions: https://www.icwsm.org/2023/index.html/call_for_submissions.html

Important Dates

  • Workshop Papers Submissions: March 27, 2023 April 09, 2023
  • Workshop Paper Acceptance Notification: April 10, 2023 April 30, 2023
  • Workshop Final Camera-Ready Paper Due: May 5, 2023
  • ICWSM-2023 Workshops Day: June 5, 2023

Organizers

  • Gabriella Pasi (Full Professor), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
  • Rishabh Upadhyay (Research Fellow), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
  • Marco Viviani (Associate Professor), University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

Program Committee