As part of our ongoing collaboration with the UK England chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-UK England), UnBias will run a workshop on:
Algorithmic awareness building for User Trust in online platforms
Time: Friday, November 30th 2018, 18:00 to 21:00 (UTC), London
Place: Cloudflare offices, 25 Lavington Street, Southwark, London (link to Google Map)
Continue reading Workshop on Algorithmic awareness building for User Trust in online platforms
The Nottingham UnBias team have finished running our Youth Juries and we are delighted to announce the launch of a report ‘Youth Juries- what we learned from you’ – for the children and young people that participated. If you were one of these people- thank you for taking part! We hope that you enjoy reading the report. We would also like to thank our Youth Advisory Group for their thoughtful and constructive insights that helped to design and shape the report.
For a shorter summary of what we did in the Youth Juries and what the team discovered, please keep reading…
The Fairness Toolkit has been developed for UnBias by Giles Lane and his team at Proboscis, with the input of young people and stakeholders. It is one of our project outputs aiming to promote awareness and stimulate a public civic dialogue about how algorithms shape online experiences and to reflect on possible changes to address issues of online unfairness. The tools are not just for critical thinking, but for civic thinking – supporting a more collective approach to imagining the future as a contrast to the individual atomising effect that such technologies often cause.
The toolkit contains the following elements:
1. Handbook
2. Awareness Cards
3. TrustScape
4. MetaMap
5. Value Perception Worksheets
All components of Toolkit are freely available to download and print from our site under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Demonstrations of the toolkit will be given at the V&A Digital Design weekend, London September 22nd.
More information is available on the Fairness Toolkit, and Trustscapes pages.
As of May 25th 2018 the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018) has taken effect in the UK, supporting and supplementing the implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
An important requirement in the DPA2018, going beyond the GDPR, is the inclusion of an Age Appropriate Design Code (section 123 of DPA2018) to provide guidance on the design standards that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will expect providers of online ‘Information Society Services’ (ISS), which are likely to be accessed by children, to meet.
The ICO is responsible for drafting the Code and has issued a call for evidence is the first stage of the consultation process.
Continue reading Age-Appropriate Design Code – call for evidence by the ICO
On 21st March the House of Select Committee on Communications published a report called ‘Growing up with the internet’. The report is based on an enquiry conducted by the House of Lords into Children and the Internet. UnBias team member Professor Marina Jirotka served as a specialist advisor to the enquiry and team member Professor Derek McAuley gave verbal evidence to it, elaborating on the written evidence submitted by Perez, Koene and McAuley.
Continue reading “Growing up Digital” UnBias team members contribute to House of Lords report
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.
You are invited to join us for the launch of a groundbreaking report that articulates the voice of children and young people, and their relationship to the internet and digital technologies;
In April 2015 young people aged between 12 and 17 gathered together in the cities of Leeds, London and Nottingham to participate in a series of jury-styled focus groups designed to ‘put the internet on trial’. In total, nine juries took place which included 108 young people, approximately 12 participants per jury.
The report outlines the ground-breaking research process, using actors to set scenarios for debate and a deliberative process to capture the changing views of young people as they examine a broad range of claims and evidence.
The policy suggestions, straight from the mouths and imaginations of the young participants, aimed at Ministers, Industry, Educators and Business are vibrant, surprising and pragmatic.
We hope you will join us to hear more
The UnBias team is pleased to announce the launch of a ground-breaking report that articulates the voice of children and young people, and their relationship to the internet and digital technologies.
This report is titled ‘The Internet on our Own Term: How Children and Young People Deliberated about their Digital Rights’ and describes the work carried since April 2015 in which young people aged between 12 and 17 gathered together in the cities of Leeds, London and Nottingham to participate in a series of jury-styled focus groups designed to ‘put the internet on trial’. In total, nine juries took place which included 108 young people, approximately 12 participants per jury.
Continue reading Announcement: 5Rights Youth Juries report launch at Parliament
The first youth jury sessions of the UnBias project took place last weekend and were highly interesting and thought provoking. Despite the cold and rainy weather, we had a great turnout with nearly 30 young people choosing to attend. Our youth jurors mostly ranged in age from 13 to 18 and took part in two interactive activities.
Continue reading UnBias Youth Juries at Game City – Nottingham
This workshop has been designed for 13 to 24 years old interested in understanding how the internet works. Contrary to public opinion, young people care about their personal data and want a digital world more transparent, a digital world they can trust. Little is know, for example, about how Amazon is able to tailor advertisements and recommend products that are actually interesting for potential online customers, or how Facebook decides which news Facebook users may be more inclined to read. All the mechanisms that support this filtering of information and products is obscure and internet users would like to know more about it, such as possible bias in the behaviour of the algorithm and, more important, have some control over these recommender and personalisation systems.
This event aims to closely work with young people to further understand how aware ‘digital natives’ are about algorithm bias, their attitudes and main concerns and recommendations when interacting with such systems. This information will help us to better understand the way young people interact with such systems and identify youth-led solutions for teaching critical thinking toward digital information systems. We will apply different engagement tools and methodologies including, hands-on excersices using the computer facilities from CityGames, ‘youth juries’ to facilitate discussion, reflection and a deeper understanding of youth online behaviour and youth-lead software solutions.
All participants will receive a £10 gift voucher for their contribution.
Event Summary
In order to promote digital literacy among young people about algorithm bias, the UnBias team at Horizon, The University of Nottingham, presents an innovative format to bring people together and facilitate reflection about how recommender systems work. During the event, participants will be invited to become part of a ‘jury’ that will reflect on and offer advice relating to:
The aim of our juries is not only to find out what participants think and feel about the experiences of the digital world (e.g., social media, data privacy, cyberbullying, etc.), but to discover if they are open to changing their minds in the light of discussion with others or exposure to new information. In order to explore such questions, we are interested in discussing i) the reasons that jury members give for adopting particular perspectives and positions; and ii) the extent to which participant’s’ perspectives and positions change (individually and collectively) between their arrival in the jury session and their departure. The jury session will take 2-hrs including refreshment and it will be led by a trained facilitator whose task will be to provide a safe space for participants to express themselves freely and critically.
FAQs
No, you will be able to access a computer at CityGames
Yes, once you register your participation a researcher from the University of Nottingham will contact you via email and send you all the documents required for you to take part in this workshop. We are going to collect participant’s opinions and concerns regarding the way algorithms and recommender systems work. To collect this data, we need your consent and if you are a minor, we also need parental consent.
You can email researcher Dr Elvira Perez at elvira.perez@nottingham.ac.uk with any questions
