Workshop Proceedings of the 18th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Workshop: ICWSM General Reports
DOI: 10.36190/2024.00The AAAI International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) is the premier interdisciplinary conference for computational and social scientific research about social media and the interactive Internet. Each year, the conference brings together hundreds of scholars from across the globe to share papers, posters, demonstrations, workshops, and tutorials that advance state-of-the-art theories and methods for understanding human behavior online. Building on the inaugural diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) report published in 2021, this document reflects an effort to revive this critical form of reporting in order to 1) retain and publicly share a record of the efforts made and 2) to show areas of strengths and weaknesses in these efforts for future iterations of the conference. Unique efforts in 2024 served two sets of goals: fostering diversity and inclusivity, and enhancing research impact and accountability. Efforts aimed at improving diversity and inclusivity included the development of a Global Initiative that brought six scholars from the Global South to the conference in person to develop papers with senior ICWSM community members, the creation of a student volunteering and mentorship program, additional funds to increase diversity at the conference through student travel scholarships, and a virtual JoinICWSM event that provided information about the conference and the community to scholars in the Global South. Efforts to enhance research impact and accountability included improving ICWSMs standings in a conference rankings benchmark, a Special Issue of the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media that encouraged participation from social scientists, the improvement of documenting and reporting research ethics through the introduction of a research ethics checklist, and an improvement in reviewing practices through a post-submission checklist. Here, we reflect on these additions, as well as more broadly on the DEI-related vision of the conference created in 2021.