The role of emotional intelligence is increasing at fast speed in everyday computer-mediated interactions, thanks to the integration of more or less explicit affective elements in social networks, apps, virtual assistants, etc. Expressed through emojis, color, tags or speech, affect has become part of our relationships with computers, adding depth and involvement to them. The technical advancement of the available expressive means, from 3D to language technologies, is one of the key factors of this process. ESSEM 2017 addresses the expression of emotions in many-to-many interaction and in one-to-one interaction as a tool for promoting, analysing and measuring user engagement.

In particular, we are interested in tools and models that rely on NLP, acoustic and video analysis; theories and methods that bridge the expression of emotions from language to media are especially needed to overcome the limitations of language-specific and media-specific approaches. ESSEM 2017 focuses on interaction as a testbed for the models and tools developed for social and expressive media.

The ultimate goal is to devise socio-emotional strategies to foster user engagement. We encourage contributions on applications that specifically address the role of sentiment and emotions in the interactions that occur through social and expressive media, with a special focus on cultural heritage, artistic expression, education and entertainment (e.g., storytelling, artistic curation, audience development, games and edutainment).