New Interest Group on Computational Methods at ICA

New Interest Group on Computational Methods at ICA

A new interest group on computational methods will be created at the International Communication Association (ICA) which is the largest academic association of communication researchers around the world. The interest group focuses on the methods of computational social science used in communication research. In particular, computational methods cover computerized tools and algorithms for collecting, processing, analyzing, and visualizing online data from social media (e.g., BBSs, blogs, microblogs, online social networks, photo-/video sharing sites, etc.). As such, the group distinguishes from other existing divisions/groups of ICA (e.g., Communication and Technology, Mass Communication, and Political Communication etc.) that deal with conceptual issues of social media whereas this group is exclusively oriented to methodological issues. Prof. Jonathan Zhu and Dr. Winson Peng from the Web Mining Lab drafted the proposal for creating the interest group on computational methods, which was strongly supported by more than 50 communication scholars from 13 countries/regions. The proposal was formally approved by the ICA Board of Directors on January 17, 2016. The interest group will have its first business meeting during the Annual Conference of International Communication Association to be held in Fukuoka on June 9-13, 2016.