Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

Workshop: Workshop Reports

DOI: 10.36190/2021.82

Published: 2021-06-01
Mediate 2021: News Media and Computational Journalism Workshop
Panayiotis Smeros, Jérémie Rappaz, Marya Bazzi, Elena Kochkina, Maria Liakata, Karl Aberer

With a drastic shift towards digital communication, individuals and organizations are able to almost instantly disseminate information to a large audience with little-to-no regulation, creating both new challenges and opportunities. This digital shift in our mediasphere has caused a profound change in the production and consumption of information, which in turn has strong implications on the social and political landscape. The challenges that result from mass information diffusion have become more visible to the general public in light of recent events such as the COVID-19 infodemic and the US election. In this second rendition of MEDIATE, we continued our focus on the topic of misinformation and examined it via three interrelated lenses: (1) automated methods tackling misinformation; (2) uptake of automated information verification; and (3) ethics, regulation, and governance. In line with the spirit of this workshop series, we brought together media practitioners and academics to discuss these three themes, with particular emphasis on cross-discipline interaction. Our workshop shed light on a variety of perspectives around common themes, opportunities for collaborations and further research, as well as open challenges.