The increasing availability of data across many socio-technical systems, such as online social media, mobile phone networks, and collaborative knowledge platforms, presents novel challenges and intriguing research opportunities. As more online services permeate through our everyday life and as data from various domains are connected and integrated with each other, the boundary between ‘real-world’ and ‘virtual online world’ becomes blurry. Scholars from different fields have now rich sources of information on individual behaviors at a scale that only a decade ago was hardly conceivable. Such data cover both online and offline activities of people, as well as multiple time scales, prompting a variety of research questions on human behaviors and activities in the real and online worlds.

Goal of this workshop is to provide a venue for discussing recent advances in the study of socio-technical systems and collective behaviors that cross or bridge online and offline world. A particular focus will be given to contributions exploring the intersection between data-driven and network-based approaches grounded in social theory, urban research and geo-social studies.

The meeting will thus represent an invaluable chance to gather together the communities of network scientists, computational scientists, and social scientists. It will provide a unique occasion to discuss state-of-the-art research related to fields such as data science and network science, focusing on recent developments and with an eye to future directions, paving the way for potential new collaborations.

An objective of the event is to create a fully interdisciplinary venue, bringing together scientists from different disciplines including physics, sociology, mathematics, computer science, urban planning, cognitive science, digital humanities and information technologies.

Connecting Online & Offline Life (COOL2014) is a Workshop of the 23rd International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2014).