I was very pleased to present UnBias’ data at two great recent UK events that addressed children’s safety and wellbeing and children’s rights at: the NSPCC annual conference, ‘How safe are our Children? Growing up online’, 20th-21st June, in London and at the launch of the ‘Children, Rights and Childhood’ event, on 22nd June in Birmingham.
The Events
The Nottingham UnBias Team has been working with children aged 3-13 years to help them to learn how the internet works and to reflect on issues of personal information and online filter bubbles, through creating their own “data gardens”. We attended a Family Discovery Day on the 16th June at the University of Nottingham and the STEM Festival at Bluecoat Beechdale Academy on Saturday 23rd June.
We are pleased to announce that UnBias won one of the three 2017 RCUK Digital Economy Theme ‘Telling Tales of Engagement’ awards. The evaluation process for this award considered both the impact of our previous work and a proposed new activity to “tell the story” of our research.
Our submission was titled “building and engaging with multi-stakeholder panels for developing policy recommendations”, highlighting the importance to our research of engaging with our stakeholder panel and with organizations that are shaping the policy and governance space for algorithmic systems.
Continue reading RCUK Digital Economy Theme ‘Telling Tales of Engagement’ award for UnBias
‘Do you take care on the internet? Does it take care of you?’
We were very pleased to take part in Science in the Park 2018 last Saturday 10th March, which was held at the beautiful Wollaton Hall in Nottingham and organised by the British Science Association.
Hundreds of people attended this free event that offered a very diverse and fun programme with lots of hands-on activities and demonstrations on different topics: life sciences, astronomy, chemistry, physics, psychology, natural history, engineering, etc.
Some of us attended a joint conference of the ECREA (European Communications Research and Education Association) Communication and Media Industries, on the 10th-11th November in Stockholm. About 100 people, mainly academics, researchers from NGOs and media consultants from Europe and the US, took part.
Continue reading Digital Democracy: Critical Perspectives in the Age if Big Data
HOW DO YOU TAKE CARE ON THE INTERNET?
Members of the UnBias team and the Digital Wildfire project from the Universities of Nottingham and Oxford were delighted to participate in Mozilla Festival (MozFest), which took place over the weekend of 28th-29th October 2017. The festival saw thousands of members of the general public, of all ages and nationalities, pass through the doors of Ravensbourne College to engage in a festival that aimed to promote a healthy internet and a web for all. Issues of digital inclusion, web literacy and privacy and security were some of the key topics that were discussed at the event.
On February 10th and 11th, UnBias participated in the 2017 Explorers Fair Expo at the Nottingham Broadway cinema to engage with parent, children and citizens of any age in discussing the ways in which algorithms affect our lives.
Continue reading UnBias public engagement at the Explorers Fair
As part of the Explorers Fair Expo at the Nottingham Broadway cinema UnBias will run public engagement activities on Friday 1oth and Saturday 11th of February 2017. All ages welcome.
Our program for the event is as follows:
Friday 10th Febr 9.45 – 15.15
Drop in activity: Interacting with different web browsers & search engines – Do you care? E. Pérez-Vallejos, UoN
Hands-on exercises comparing results when using different browsers and/or search engines. To enquiry and discuss about their online preferences and/or concerns regarding: algorithms, filtering systems, fairness and possible recommendations.
Saturday 11th Febr
12-45 – 13.15
Talk: Who is in charge? You or the algorithm? A. Koene, UoN
Looking for an answer to just about any question? Just look it up online. All the world’s information is available through search engines, social networks, news recommenders etc. Ever wondered how these systems select which information is relevant for you?
1.45 – 15.00
“UnBias” Youth Juries: A youth-led discussion about algorithm fairness. M. Cano, L. Dowthwaite, V. Portillo, UoN
Youth-lead focus groups with different scenarios to prompt discussions about some particular aspects on how the internet works (with focus on algorithm fairness when interacting with automated systems), giving participants the chance to share their views and express their concerns.
A lot has been said about algorithms working as gatekeepers and making decisions on our behalf, often without us noticing it. I can surely find an example in my daily life where I do notice it and benefit from it. This happens when I use the “Discover Weekly” Spotify play-list. By comparing my listening habits to that of other users with similar but not identical choices, Spotify allows information on the fringes to be shared. It is thus “tailored” to my music taste, and it is incredibly accurate in predicting things I would like. Besides, it lets me discover new music and bands and in many occasions can also take me back in time with some tunes I have probably not listened to for a long time.
Continue reading Algorithmic discrimination: are you IN or OUT?
