"For Woman, Life, Freedom: A Participatory AI-Based Social Web Analysis..." is the first paper of mine (accepted at #IJCAI2023) as the first author within the United States where I have been exploring the vast landscape of Persian Twitter to shed light on the social movement that emerged following Mahsa Amini's tragic death.

In this study, we delved into the essence of over 30 million tweets, examining the motives and sentiments behind the protests that swept across Iran. The key findings of our research are as follows:

1. برای:

Following Mahsa Amini's death, a remarkable Twitter challenge called "برای" (because of) surfaced, empowering people to share the reasons fueling their protests. A poignant moment came when Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour transformed these tweets into a soul-stirring song (It won a Grammy). Our analysis compared each line of the song to all the tweets shared in this challenge, revealing the top three reasons that sparked the protests: a. For a girl who wished she were a boy (~25%) b. For freedom (~16%) c. For my sister, your sister, our sisters (~10%)

These findings underscored the significance of gender equality as a pivotal demand driving the movement.

2. Hidden story of account creation dates:

To gain a comprehensive understanding, we categorized accounts into three subsets based on the hashtags they used (#مهساامینی, #اعدامکنید, etc.). It became evident that pro-protest accounts (using #مهسا_امینی) account creation date aligned best with Persian Twitter baseline. Conversely, pro-execution accounts largely created around November 2020 (آبان 1398).

3. A Glance at Gender Equality in Iran:

Perhaps the most intriguing revelation was the surge in support for gender equality on Persian Twitter. The volume of tweets opposing gender equality was found to exceed those in favor of it, both before and after the protests. This polarization indicates that gender equality became a hotly debated topic following Mahsa Amini's tragedy. However, amidst this polarization, we observed a promising trend - the number of gender equality supporters grew significantly, overshadowing the opposition.

Full Paper

In the summer of 2023, I was fortunate enough to partake in the prestigious Annual Meeting of the Association of Computational Linguistics (ACL-2023) held in the vibrant city of Toronto. My involvement wasn't just as an attendee, but I also had the honor of serving as a volunteer, which allowed me a closer look at the orchestration of this grand academic gathering. The conference presented a plethora of workshops and tutorials, each a treasure trove of knowledge, spearheaded by superstar researchers representing tech behemoths like Google and Microsoft. The exposure to cutting-edge technologies and methodologies under the tutelage of these industry stalwarts was nothing short of enlightening.

The exchanges that ensued in the corridors of the conference were as enriching as the formal sessions themselves. Engaging in intellectual discourse, sharing and receiving feedback on research ideas with leading lights of the field not only broadened my horizons but also instilled a deeper sense of purpose and direction in my academic pursuits. The camaraderie among attendees, the blend of academia and industry expertise, and the collective endeavor towards advancing the frontiers of computational linguistics made ACL-2023 an unforgettable expedition in my scholarly journey.