17th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation
September 18-20, 2024, Hybrid.
Gates Hillman Complex,
4902 Forbes Ave,Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Important Information: This year we plan to continue using the Whova app to host conference materials. All registrants will be invited to the Whova App. Presenters can fill-in bios, add their presentations, and arrange joint travel to the venue. Virtual posters will also be presented via the Whova App.

For Talks: Talks will be 20 minutes (15 + 5 for questions). I try to keep to under a dozen slides, but everyone has their own style. If you plan on being virtual, we are setup for live talks but we do ask for a pre-taped version to be sent to us ahead of time in case of technical/connection issues during the conference. Details on recording your talk(s) are below. We ask for a download link to your talks to be sent to us by 15-Sep if you are virtual. These will not be hosted online, but only presented during your scheduled talk.

For Posters: In-Person posters will be during the evening reception TBD. Posters should be roughly 3'x4' or 4'x3' and easels will be provided. Please plan to record a 2-3 minute virtual lightning presentation about your poster using the recording instructions below, and upload it to the Whova App (once you’re invited) along with a PDF of your poster. All poster presenters will be able to do this.

Recording Instructions: Please record your full or lightning talk using MS PowerPoint Slide Show format (.ppsx) or any presentation screen recording with the MP4 file format. This link can help you record your slideshow: Click here. If your file size exceeds 40MB, please reduce the size using the following link: Click here. For posters, please try to upload a file no greater than 10-15MB.





MAIN CONFERENCE AGENDA (All times are in US Eastern Time)

Wednesday, September 18, 2024 Conference Day 1

Time Session 1 Session 2
09:00 - 10:00 Registration Tutorial #1 (9:30am - 12pm) Frank Ritter
    09:30 - 12:00
10:00 - 11:20 Talks: Health and Media Attitudes
  • Samantha Phillips, Lynnette Hui Xian Ng, Wenqi Zhou and Kathleen M. Carley. Moral and emotional influences on attitude stability towards COVID-19 vaccines on social media
  • Niloofar Yousefi, Nitin Agarwal and Emmanuel Addai. Developing Epidemiological Models with Differentiated Infected Intensity
  • Mert Can Cakmak, Nitin Agarwal, Selimhan Dagtas and Diwash Poudel. Unveiling Bias in YouTube Shorts: Analyzing Thumbnail Recommendations and Topic Dynamics
  • Salim Sazzed. Deciphering Emotional, Linguistic, and Semantic Patterns in Reddit Suicidal Discourse
11:20-11:40 20-min Coffee Break
11:40 - 13:00 Panel 1: Data and Research
13:00 - 14:00 1-Hour Lunch Tutorial #2 (1pm-3:30pm) - CMU
    13:00 - 15:30
14:00 - 15:20 Talks: Generative AI Applications
  • Evan Williams and Kathleen Carley. Multimodal LLMs Struggle with Basic Visual Network Analysis: a VNA Benchmark
  • Aaditya Bhatia and Gita Sukthankar. Moderating Democratic Discourse with LLMs
  • Dana Warmsley, Samuel Johnson and Jiejun Xu. Assessing the Sociocultural Alignment of Large Language Models: An Empirical Study of Chinese-Speaking Populations
  • Chirayu Sanghvi and Alina Vereshchaka. SAARTHI : Smart Auto Assessment and Roadside Technical Help Interface
15:20 - 15:40 20-min Coffee Break
15:40 - 17:00 Keynote 1- Donald Adjeroh
17:00 - 18:30 Poster Session (SBP-BRiMS) & Reception

Thursday, September 19, 2024 Conference Day 2

Time Session 1 Session 2 Session 3
10:00 - 11:20 Talks: Group Behavior
  • Samer Al-Khateeb, Jack Burright, Steven L. Fernandes and Nitin Agarwal. Analyzing and Predicting Meetup Mobs Outcome Via Statistical Analysis and Deep Learning
  • Sayantan Bhattacharya, Nitin Agarwal and Diwash Poudel. Ablation Studies in Protest Networks: The Role of Influential Agents in Shaping Protests
  • Ling Sun, Kathleen M. Carley and Yuan Rao. From Fact to Fiction: Unpacking Causal Drivers of User Information Sharing Behaviors
  • Hossein Salemi, Tarin Sultana Sharika and Hemant Purohit. Integrated Content-Graph Analysis to Characterize Social Media Conversations During Disaster Evacuations
 Tutorial #3 - ASU
    		Grad Consortium
      11:20-11:40 20-min Coffee Break Tutorial #4 - Charles Macal
        11:40 - 13:00 Panel 2: AI and Research
        13:00 - 14:00 Mentorship Lunch
        14:00 - 15:20 Talks: Cognitive and Social Models
        • Robert Thomson and Christian Lebiere. Comparing Similarity and Homophily-Based Cognitive Models of Influence and Conformity
        • Amirreza Bagherzadehkhorasani and Farnaz Tehranchi. Extending VRAT: from 3D eye tracking visualization to enabling ACT-R to interact with virtual reality environments
        • Siyu Wu, Alessandro Oltramari and Frank Ritter. VSM-ACT-R: Toward Using Cognitive Architecture For Manufacturing Solutions
        • David Mortimore, Raymond R. Buettner Jr. and Kathrn Aten. A Cognitive Slack Approach to Organizational Design
        15:20 - 15:40 20-Min Coffee Break
        15:40 - 17:00 Talks: Applications of Political Data
        • Lynnette Hui Xian Ng, Mihovil Bartulovic and Kathleen M. Carley. Tiny-BotBuster: Identifying Automated Political Coordination in Digital Campaigns
        • Alexander Caceres-Wright, Naveen Udhayasankar, Grant Bunn, Stef Shuster and Kenneth Joseph. Explicit Stance Detection in the Political Domain: A New Concept and Associated Dataset for Model Development
        • Peter Carragher and Kathleen M. Carley. Accountability in Search Engine Manipulation: A Case Study of the Iranian News Ecosystem
        • Sultan Alsarra, Parker Whitehead, Naif Alatrush, Luay Abdeljaber, Latifur Khan, Javier Osorio, Patrick Brandt and Vito D'Orazio. Extractive Question Answering for Spanish and Arabic Political Text
        17:00 - 18:30 Poster and Demo Session (IDeaS) & Reception

        Friday, September 20, 2024 Conference Day 3 and Closing

        Time Sessions
        10:00 - 11:20 Keynote 2: Patricia Aufderheide
        11:20-11:40 20-Min Break
        11:40 - 13:00 Talks: Social Networking and Novel Tools
        • Patrick Park, Henry Xu and Kathleen Carley. The Life of a Tie: Social Origins of Network Diversity
        • Hend Alrasheed, Alina Fonseca Flores, Vinicius Andrade Brei and Alex Paul Pentland. Examining Socio-Economic Isolation in Urban Spaces
        • Yuning Liu, Geoff Klassen, Jenna Mee, Justin Pointer, Marvi Baloch, Laura Marciano and Nathaniel Osgood. User-donated screenshots analysis: feasibility of a new approach to collect objective social media app usage in adolescents
        • Alexey Tregubov, Jeremy Abramson, Stephen Schwab and Jim Blythe. A Tool for Distributed Collaborative Causal Discovery
        13:00 - 14:00 Business Lunch Break
        14:00 - 15:20 Grad Consortium Lighning, Awards & Farewell