Annual IDeaS Conference: Disinformation, Hate Speech, and Extremism Online

October 14-17, 2025 - Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, Pittsburgh, PA  

Natural disasters, elections, climate changes, insurrections, pandemics, and new technologies are rocking the world. People talk about events, both these massive ones and much smaller ones, on line. Social media platforms, search engines and websites have become the window through which these events are viewed and interpreted.  Those on social media seek and shape information, build and join communities, often with impacts in the physical world. One consequence is an online breeding ground for growing and disseminating disinformation, hate speech and extremism.  In this conference we ask: How is this done?  Who is doing it? Why is it being done? What are the social consequences? How can it be countered?

IDeaS will host it's second hybrid conference on disinformation, hate speech, and extremism online in October 2025. This conference aims to advance the science of social-cybersecurity through research and applications in this area.  

We invite papers that address questions related to disinformation, hate speech and extremism on line. We are particularly interested in papers that touch on the role that disinformation, hate speech and extremism are playing in events such as the vaccine roll out, presidential elections around the world, civil conflict, and community resilience. Policy, empirical, qualitative, data science and simulation papers are of equal interest.  

The conference will include: invited panels, posters, and regular talks. There will also be the opportunity for those interested to demo their technologies.

Registration

Participants and speakers can attend virtually or in-person at Carnegie Mellon University, venue to be determined. We will be using the conference app Whova, for all participants in-person and attending virtually to connect, view sessions and network. Links will be sent to those registered 1-2 weeks prior to the conference to create your profile.

We are using RegPacks registration system to register conference participants. Once registration is open, there will be a link below to register.

We are currently accepting papers and the agenda and Keynote information will be forthcoming as papers are excepted this summer. The IDeaS Conference is co-located at Carnegie Mellon University along with the annual SBP-BRiMS Conference in the Gates/Hillman Centers. Sessions scheduled for both conferences will be available to participants from both conferences. More information will be distributed to participants and presenters on locations for the sessions through the Whova conference app. Only registered participants and presenters will have access.

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