The Computation+Journalism conference is returning to Columbia University in June of 2022! It will be a hybrid event, taking place both in-person in Pulitzer Hall as well as online in a custom, virtual “extension” space.
Background
News outlets rely on computation to tell some of the biggest stories of our time. They collect data when official sources have not. They build statistical models to uncover disparities, previously ignored. And they craft visualizations to reveal new dimensions to a story. Some newsrooms have expertise in-house to produce this work, while others depend on collaborations with outside researchers.
The Computation+Journalism Conference (C+J) is a venue where journalists and researchers meet. In this setting, news organizations can share experiences with computational and social scientists, exploring new research or “innovations in practice” that can serve the public good. At C+J we strive for symmetry in our talks and panels — journalism’s reporting conventions can be both solutions to computational problems as well as sources of new research questions.
Success for our conference is measured in new published stories, new kinds of research, and new cross-professional collaborations.
Going hybrid in 2022
In 2020 we cancelled C+J as COVID restrictions were just taking hold and travel was impossible. With 2021 we bounced back and met virtually, attracting nearly 1,000 attendees from 17 countries. For 2022, we want to keep the best of what it means to meet in person, but not lose the diversity and reach possible from an online meeting — C+J 2022 will take place physically at Columbia University and virtually in a custom “extension” we have created.
The fact that people no longer have to travel to make substantial contributions at an event like this lowers the barriers to entry. As with C+J 2021, we will hope to attract both computational researchers and creators with some curiosity about journalism, as well as news organizations looking to expand their reporting capabilities or experiment with new ways to report and present stories.
Timeline
Announce the Call for Participation: March 18
Submission deadline: May 9
Decisions on contributed and refereed talks: May 13
Conference dates: June 9 (half day), 10 (full day), and possibly 11 (half day)
Call for Participation
We will borrow from the organizational structure used by the Joint Statistical Meetings led by the American Statistical Association. People can participate in one of several ways.
- Propose a contributed talk with an abstract of at most 250 words. These separate talks will be divided into sessions by the Program Committee and run in parallel at the event.
- Propose a contributed workshop with an abstract of at most 250 words. These are training sessions led by journalists or researchers, introducing a topic of interest to the community.
- Propose a refereed paper with a five-page PDF. This is the traditional paper track. Refereed papers will be divided into sessions but will be given a special place in the program.
- The Program Committee will organize several invited sessions.
- The Program Committee will invite a slate of keynote speakers.
Join us!
We will circulate details on how to submit your papers, talks and workshops shortly. For now, hold June 9th through the 11th!