Important Dates

Submission due: March 18, 2024 23:59 Anywhere on Earth

ARR reviewed submission due: April 7, 2024

Notification of acceptance: April 16, 2024

Findings of NAACL paper submission due: April 21, 2024

Camera-ready papers due: April 26, 2024

Workshop: June 20, 2024

Overview

Digital technologies have brought many benefits for society, transforming how people connect, communicate and interact with each other. However, they have also enabled abusive and harmful content such as hate speech and harassment to reach large audiences, and for their negative effects to be amplified. The sheer amount of content shared online means that abuse and harm can only be tackled at scale with the help of computational tools. However, detecting and moderating online abuse and harms is a difficult task, with many technical, social, legal and ethical challenges. The Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH) invites paper submissions from a wide range of fields, including natural language processing, machine learning, computational social sciences, law, politics, psychology, sociology and cultural studies. We explicitly encourage interdisciplinary submissions, technical as well as non-technical submissions, and submissions that focus on under-resourced languages. We also invite non-archival submissions and civil society reports. The topics covered by WOAH include, but are not limited to:

New models or methods for detecting abusive and harmful online content, including misinformation;
Biases and limitations of existing detection models or datasets for abusive and harmful online content, particularly those in commercial use;
New datasets and taxonomies for online abuse and harms;
New evaluation metrics and procedures for the detection of harmful content;
Dynamics of online abuse and harms, as well as their impact on different communities
Social, legal, and ethical implications of detecting, monitoring and moderating online abuse

In addition, we invite submissions related to the theme for this eighth edition of WOAH, which will be online harms in the age of large language models. Highly capable Large Language Models (LLMs) are now widely deployed and easily accessible by millions across the globe. Without proper safeguards, these LLMs will readily follow malicious instructions and generate toxic content. Even the safest LLMs can be exploited by bad actors for harmful purposes. With this theme, we invite submissions that explore the implications of LLMs for the creation, dissemination and detection of harmful online content. We are interested in how to stop LLMs from following malicious instructions and generating toxic content, but also how they could be used to improve content moderation and enable countermeasures like personalised counterspeech. To support our theme, we have invited an interdisciplinary line-up of high-profile speakers across academia, industry and public policy.

Submission

Submission is electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system - submission link.

The workshop will accept three types of papers.

Academic Papers (long and short): Long papers of up to 8 pages, excluding references, and short papers of up to 4 pages, excluding references. Unlimited pages for references and appendices. Accepted papers will be given an additional page of content to address reviewer comments. Previously published papers cannot be accepted.
Non-Archival Submissions: Up to 2 pages, excluding references, to summarise and showcase in-progress work and work published elsewhere.
Civil Society Reports: Non-archival submissions, with a minimum of 2 pages and no upper limit. Can include work published elsewhere.

Findings of NAACL 2024

The workshop will accept non-archival submissions for relevant papers accepted to the Findings of NAACL 2024. These papers will be presented on the workshop day as posters along with the regular archival submissions. If you would like to present your Findings paper at WOAH, please fill out this form by April 21, 2024.

Format and styling

All submissions must use the official ACL two-column format, using the supplied official style files. The templates can be downloaded in Style Files and Formatting. Submissions that do not conform to the required styles, including paper size, margin width, and font size restrictions, will be rejected without review. All submissions should adhere to the workshop policies.

All submissions, except for civil society reports, must be fully anonymised. Self-references that reveal the author’s identity, e.g., “We previously showed (Smith, 1991) …”, should be avoided. Instead, use citations such as “Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) …”.

Following the ACL 2023 guidelines, we believe that it is also important to discuss the limitations of your work, in addition to its strengths. The “Limitations” section will appear at the end of the paper, after the discussion/conclusions section and before the references, and will not count towards the page limit.

Authorship

The author list for submissions must include all (and only) individuals who made substantial contributions to the work presented. No changes to the order or composition of authorship may be made after the paper submission deadline. Submissions will be reviewed by the Programme Committee. We have included a conflict of interest section in the submission form. When submitting, you should mark all potential reviewers who have been authors on the paper, are from the same research group or institution, or who have seen versions of this paper or discussed it with you.

Anonymity Period

We are not enforcing any anonymity period.

Multiple Submissions Policy

The workshop allows for multiple submissions. Work that has been presented, or will be presented, at other venues may also be submitted as non-archival. This includes work that will be presented at the NAACL 2024 main conference, or is accepted in Findings of NAACL.

Contact Info

Please send any questions about the workshop to organizers@workshopononlineabuse.com