Introduction to WebSci’20 Workshops

Abstract

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the virtual workshops associated with the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science (WebSci’20). This year, the conference theme is “Making the Web Human-Centric? New Directions in the Web and AI.” As the workshop chairs, we selected workshops that exemplify this theme to complement the conference contributions. The theme of making the Web more human-centric is especially fitting this year as the workshops are held in the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic backdrop making the Web an ever more human-centric medium for work, play, communication, and many other societal necessities. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial injustice riots that erupted in some parts of the world have forced Web Scientists to examine new directions for the Web and AI. These workshops span topics ranging from inequality, AI on the Web for social good, personalisation and community, explanations for AI, cybercrime and cybersecurity, data immortality, and evolutionary thinking for the Web.