Motivation and Relevance to ECIR

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

Daniel J. Boorstin, New York Times, July 1983

Some 40 years, the above-mentioned citation is probably still more relevant than it was then. In fact, the process of disintermediation that Web 2.0 technologies brought in the generation and dissemination of online content within the Social Web have led to the well-known problems of information overload and the spread of misinformation, which make it difficult for users to find information that is truly useful for their purposes.

Hence, the central topic of the third edition of the ROMCIR Workshop concerns providing access to users to (topically) relevant and genuine information, to mitigate the information disorder phenomenon with respect to distinct domains.

By “information disorder” we mean all forms of communication pollution, from misinformation made out of ignorance, to the intentional sharing of false content. In this context, all those approaches that can serve to assess the genuineness of information circulating online and in social media in particular find their place.

This topic is extensive, as it concerns different contents (e.g., Web pages, news, reviews, medical information, online accounts, etc.), different Web and social media platforms (e.g., microblogging platforms, social networking services, social question-answering systems, etc.), and different purposes (e.g., identifying false information, accessing information based on its genuineness, retrieving genuine information, etc.).