<div dir="ltr"><pre style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div class="gmail-page-header" style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px 0px 30px;vertical-align:baseline;overflow:hidden;color:rgb(51,51,51);white-space:normal"><div><font face="arial,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline">    * Apologies for cross-posting *</span></font></div><div><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">Announcing the<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>2nd CIKM2020 sponsored <span class="gmail-il">Analyticup</span> challenge</b><br></font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">************************************************************************************</font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><b><font face="arial,sans-serif">**     <a href="https://data.gesis.org/covid19challenge/">COVID-19 RETWEET PREDICTION CHALLENGE </a>   **<br></font></b></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">In conjunction with CIKM 2020 (<a href="https://cikm2020.org/" target="_blank">https://cikm2020.org/</a>) (October 19th-23rd, 2020 - online)</font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">Sponsored by <b>GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences</b>,<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>HUU - Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf</b>,<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>L3S Research Center</b>and<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Chongqing University of Technology</b>.<br></font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">More details on the task page <b><a href="https://data.gesis.org/covid19challenge/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">************************************************************************************</font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-style:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><b><font face="arial,sans-serif">Task description</font></b></span></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font face="arial,sans-serif">The goal of this challenge is to predict the popularity of COVID-19-related tweets in terms of the number of their retweets. Retweeting—re-posting original content without any change—is a popular function in Twitter and can be seen as amplifying the spread of original messages. This makes retweet prediction a crucial task when studying online information diffusion processes during a time of crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic</font></span></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)">The retweet prediction task in the challenge is based on the<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="https://data.gesis.org/tweetscov19/" style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit">TweetsCOV19 dataset<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></a><span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)">--- a publicly available dataset containing more than 8 million COVID-19-related tweets, spanning the period October 2019 to April 2020.</span></font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font face="arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)">The COVID-19 Retweet Prediction Challenge is part of the CIKM2020<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>AnalytiCup<span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)">, and the winners will be invited to present their solutions during the *online*<span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>AnalytiCup<span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><span class="gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span>Workshop in October 2020.</span></font></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-style:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><b><font face="arial,sans-serif">Timeline</font></b></span></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"></p><ul><li><font face="arial,sans-serif">01.07.20 Contest and Phase 1 Begin (Validation Leaderboard opens)</font></li><li><font face="arial,sans-serif">15.08.20 Phase 2 Begin (Testing Leaderboard opens)</font></li><li><font face="arial,sans-serif">24.08.20 Last Shot & Contest End</font></li><li><font face="arial,sans-serif">01.09.20 Semi-finalists Announcement</font></li><li><font face="arial,sans-serif">01.10.20 Report & Code Due</font></li><li><font face="arial,sans-serif">20.10.20 Winner Announcement</font></li></ul><p></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-style:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><font face="arial,sans-serif"><b>Prizes</b></font></span></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;color:rgb(51,51,51)">Non-cash prizes worth 2.500€ EUR provided by L3S Research Center</span></p></div></div><div id="gmail-primary" style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;float:left;width:819px;color:rgb(51,51,51);white-space:normal"><div class="entry-content gmail-clearfix" style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;margin:0px 0px 20px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><p style="font-weight:inherit;box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;margin:0px 0px 20px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial,sans-serif">Are you competitive enough to participate? Check it out <a href="https://data.gesis.org/covid19challenge" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(220,20,60)">here!</a></font></p><p style="font-weight:inherit;box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;margin:0px 0px 20px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-style:inherit;font-weight:700">Organizers:</span><br></font></p><p style="font-weight:inherit;box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;margin:0px 0px 20px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"></p><p style="font-weight:inherit;box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;margin:0px 0px 20px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial,sans-serif">Dimitar Dimitrov,<em style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"> GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany</em><br style="box-sizing:border-box">Xiaofei Zhu, <em style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline">Chongqing University of Technology, China</em></font></p><p style="font-weight:inherit;box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;margin:0px 0px 20px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial,sans-serif"><span style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-weight:700;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline">AnalytiCup Chairs:<br style="box-sizing:border-box"></span>Dimitar Dimitrov,<em style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"> GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany</em><br style="box-sizing:border-box">Xiaofei Zhu, </font><em style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="arial,sans-serif">Chongqing University of Technology, China</font></em></p></div></div></pre></div>