Web Science 2026 in Braunschweig: new ideas and old friends from the first week in Germany

By Gianluca Demartini

Arriving in Braunschweig

From 26 to 29 May, I attended 18th ACM Web Science Conference 2026 for which I was one of the PC Chairs.

It started with great weather and 30C to then become cooler but still very sunny (with the sun rising at 5am and setting around 10pm!)

It was an opportunity to meet a lot of old friends and L3S Alumni that are now working in different places (Kiel, Cologne, Utrecht, etc.) and with whom I could catch up on their latest news.

Keynote by Steffen Staab

The conference programme included three keynote talks, among which my favourite was the one by Steffen Staab. He talked about the risks of AI and how to manage them. What was particulary relevant to our research is this framework on responsible AI.

The invited talk by Miriam Fernandez titled "The Urgent Challenge of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence" at the 4th International Workshop on DHOW: Diffusion of Harmful Content on Online Web also totally deserves a mention. She talked about the challanges around online hate and misoginy and she reflected on what are possible strategies to deal with them, including education, regulation, and technology.

Panel on the next 20 years of Web Science

From Jim Hendler's keynote saying this is at the same time the best of time and the worst of time for the Web, the panel discussed possible futures of the Web in the next 20 years. What staied with me the most was a brief mention by Wendy Hall about the fact she is working on the idea of "AI Science", that is, the same concept of needing an interdisciplinary approach to study the Web, but applied to the study of AI. This makes a lot of sense to me as often our research papers have an hard time to find a publication venue when the paper is not studying social media nor improving an AI algorithm, but rather looking at the implication of people using AI.

Taken from the website of this year conference: "Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society and vice versa. The discipline is well situated to address pressing issues of our time by incorporating various scientific approaches. We welcome quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research, including techniques from the social sciences and computer science."

If you replace Web with AI, that sounds like something that would make a lot of sense to have today!

Social Event

The city of Braunschweig hosted the conference dinner at the old town hall which is now a museum. We had a welcome speech by city representatives and by the president of TU Braunschweig. What followed during the dinner was great discussions about the future of universities around the world and great views from the balcony of the venue.

And that's my signature (just under Jim Handler's signature!) to stay forever in the archives of the city of Braunschweig!

Summary

The conference had some great talks, so I can say I am satified with the result of my work as a PC Chair as I was responsible to select the papers that were to be presented. I'm also looking forward to the plan to run a special issue of the ACM Transactions of Social Computing journal where we will invite the best papers from WebSci 2026 to submit an extended version of their work.

It's great to be back in Germany, where you can find 24/7 automatic dispensers of bicycle inner tubes, 'cause you never know when you are going to need one!