C+J 2022 — A hybrid gathering

News outlets rely on computation to tell some of the biggest stories of our time. Journalists collect data when official sources have not. They build statistical models to uncover disparities, previously ignored. And they craft new visualizations to help us experience our world in different ways. 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 — news organizations share experiences with computational and social scientists, and together explore new kinds of practices that can serve the public good. For C+J 2022 we will take a very broad view of the term “researchers” to include our traditional audience of computing, data and social scientists, as well as artists and digital humanities scholars, historians, geographers and architects.

Submission Guidelines

In 2020 we canceled 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.

Building on the success of C+J 2021, we are planning for C+J 2022 to be a large, inclusive event — it will be both in-person and online, a “hybrid” meeting. 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.

You can contribute to C+J 2022 in one of three ways: Propose a refereed paper, a contributed talk, a contributed session, or a contributed workshop. In general, proposals should explore the interface between computing and journalism, covering the entire process and practice of journalism in context, including:

• Computation and reporting, analysis, and sensemaking
• Computation and storytelling
• Computation and publishing
• Computation and distribution, including social media
• Computation and audience engagement with news

For submissions, 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. All contributions are in the form of PDFs.

1. Refereed Papers 

These papers will be evaluated by referees and included in our online proceedings. They are to follow a standard set by the Association for Computing Machinery, and should not exceed five (5) pages, including references. For those familiar with C+J prior to 2021, refereed papers are the standard way you have contributed in the past.

Accepted papers will be grouped into sessions that receive special notation in the conference schedule, and each timeslot will include at most one accepted paper session. For examples, see the schedule for C+J 2021.

The C+J 2022 oline proceedings will be linked off our conference site cj2022.brown.columbia.edu, but should be considered "non-archival" for the sake of journal submissions elsewhere. At the same time, we highly encourage unique and novel contributions with limited overlap to other related publications the author may have or intend to publish. 

Use the "Paper" upload portion of the submission form to submit a PDF of not more than 5 pages.

2. Contributed Talks 

In C+J 2021 we introduced new categories of participation that make it easier for researchers and journalists to get involved. A contributed talk requires a description of at most 250 words. During the conference, sessions of contributed talks will be run "in parallel" so that the audience might move between sessions. For examples, see the schedule for C+J 2021.

1. Your name, including affiliation and email address
2. Talk Title
3. Talk Abstract (250 words or less)

Use the "Title" and "Abstract" fields of the submission form to fill in these items.

3. Contributed Sessions

In C+J 2021 we introduced new categories of participation that make it easier for researchers and journalists to get involved. A contributed session consists of several contributed talks, curated into a single session. Proposing a contributed session requires a description of at most 250 words for each talk. During the conference, contributed sessions and talks will be run "in parallel" so that the audience might move between sessions. For examples, see the schedule for C+J 2021.

1. Session Title
2. Session Description. Please provide any of the following:
   • Short description of session, including focus, content, timeliness, and appeal
   • List of invited speakers/panelists, including affiliations and email addresses for each and tentative title for each presentation
   • Format of session (e.g., chair, four speakers, and discussant)
3. Session organizer, including affiliation and email address
4. Session chair, including affiliation and email address
5. Discussant (if any), including affiliation and email address

Use the "Title" and "Abstract" fields of the submission form to fill in these items.

4. Contributed Workshops

Sometimes, the best form of a contribution is as a workshop. Do you have a software tool you would like to demonstrate? Are you interested in helping train journalists in some aspect of computing science? Are there computing or reporting skills you'd like to pass along? A workshop might be the right form of contribution for you. For example workshop sessions see the Brown Institute's Wrangler Series.

1. Your name, including affiliation and email address
2. Workshop Title
3. Workshop Abstract (250 words or less)

Use the "Title" and "Abstract" fields of the submission form to fill in these items.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to Mark Hansen, markh@columbia.edu