CALL FOR PAPERS Studying Central-Eastern European Politics in the Age of AI – A Workshop on Data and Methods Background and scope The aim of the workshop is to bring together a diverse group of political, policy, communication, and legal scholars as well as computational social scientists and linguists working on the data-centered analysis of the politics and international relations of Central-Eastern Europe (CEE). This regional scope mainly covers the four Visegrad countries, but work related to the Balkans, the Baltic states, Central European, and Eastern European countries will also be considered. We are particularly interested in presentations relying on a text-as-data framework (Cardie and Wilkerson, 2008; Monroe and Schrodt, 2008; Wilkerson and Casas, 2017; Grimmer and Stewart, 2013), and those applying cutting-edge quantitative and/or artificial intelligence-supported methodology to quantify and evaluate policy agendas in the region (see e.g. studies associated with the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), following the research agenda presented in Baumgartner, Breunig, and Grossman (2019). Data presentations will mainly focus on collections featuring text data from 1990 on (although historical datasets will also be considered) including parliamentary, executive/presidential/government/policy documents, print, online, and social media, as well as archives related to the constitutional/legal agenda. Methods presentations will primarily review work related to the collection, hosting, cleaning/processing, and analysis (including machine learning and large language models) of textual data as well as linguistic issues concerning the region. Workshop details We invite scholars to submit their proposals related to data and methods-related presentations with a focus on Central-Eastern Europe. We are particularly interested in work on the relations between CEE countries and/or the EU, the U.S., China, and Russia named entity recognition targeted or aspect-based emotion analysis related to these named entities classification of policy topics Only submissions explicitly addressing the data collection and/or methodology of the research project will be assessed. We welcome presentations on ongoing projects and work-in-progress, as well as already published work and data repositories. The workshop is organized by poltextLAB (poltextlab.com) at the HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest. Organising committee: Rebeka Kiss, Ákos Máté, Csaba Molnár, Orsolya Ring, Miklós Sebők. Duration: 1pm, November 23rd (Thursday), – 1pm, November 24th (Friday) Venue: Centre for Social Sciences, 4 Tóth Kálmán utca, Budapest 1097 (Google Maps) Target Audience: Both senior scholars and PhD/postdoctoral level participants Participation: Accepted participants are expected to do a 10-minute presentation on their data and/or methodological work and serve as chairs/discussants. The application form is available here: https://forms.gle/5sciQDGAAKyS1NJy9. The abstract to be submitted should be no longer than 250 words. The submission deadline for proposals is October 6, 2023. Applicants will be notified on an ongoing basis, but no later than October 13, 2023. The registration fee and the workshop dinner for all accepted presenters are kindly sponsored by our partners: HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences, MORES (Horizon Europe), V-SHIFT Momentum Research Group (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), the Artificial Intelligence National Laboratory of Hungary, the COMPTEXT Conference (comptextconference.org) and the Visegrád Fund. There are a limited number of travel grants available for one presenting author per paper for economy flights, train or bus rides, and for one night of accommodation. Please indicate on the submission form if you would like to be considered for the travel grant. Please keep in mind that we can offer a limited number of travel grants, and we apply a first come, first served policy for accepted proposals. For more details, please consult the PDF of the call. Please contact Laura Seben for additional information at lauraanna.seben@tk.hu.
