Digital Personhood Network
Lead Research Organisation:
Heriot-Watt University
Department Name: S of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Abstract
In January 2013 the Government Office for Science published the results of a year-long Foresight study on Future Identities. It was led by Sir John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor. One of its main conclusions was that people's identities are likely to be significantly affected by technology over the next 10 years due to the emergence hyper-connectivity (afforded by smart phones and similar devices), the spread of social media and the increase in online personal information. People now have multiple overlapping and not necessarily consistent identities and they often express their identities through membership of social and professional groups, often not being aware of conditions of use, or ownership, or that some organisations may use information intended for social use for vetting purposes.
What is clear is that digital identity and digital personhood are playing increasingly important roles in our lives and that we are not fully aware of the implications of their potential use, creation, ownership, exploitation or control.
The Digital Economy Theme has therefore initiated a £5M programme of research in 'Digital Personhood' comprising five research projects led by eminent academics from a wide variety of disciplines. The initial remit covers:
a) Overcoming barriers to the expression of digital identity.
b) Curating personal, digital narratives and memories.
c) Physical proxies of digital self: connecting the digital and physical world.
d) Multiple, digital projections and online identities.
e) Understanding how citizens could be empowered by utilizing the value of their digital self.
The Digital Personhood Network will facilitate collaboration across all of these and other relevant research projects in order that can they maximise their collective impact. A series of open meetings will be held that will include other relevant stakeholders and will allow projects to share and benefit from each other's results, expertise and contacts. These meetings will also allow the participants to develop a common view or 'map' of this emerging research area and its associated societal challenges. This 'map' will help aid public understanding of the different aspects, contexts and issues concerning Digital Personhood. It will allow the results from the projects to be quickly located via the Network's website and applications which will be similarly structured. Finally we expect that it will inform and structure discussion of the issues and area at government and funding council level.
What is clear is that digital identity and digital personhood are playing increasingly important roles in our lives and that we are not fully aware of the implications of their potential use, creation, ownership, exploitation or control.
The Digital Economy Theme has therefore initiated a £5M programme of research in 'Digital Personhood' comprising five research projects led by eminent academics from a wide variety of disciplines. The initial remit covers:
a) Overcoming barriers to the expression of digital identity.
b) Curating personal, digital narratives and memories.
c) Physical proxies of digital self: connecting the digital and physical world.
d) Multiple, digital projections and online identities.
e) Understanding how citizens could be empowered by utilizing the value of their digital self.
The Digital Personhood Network will facilitate collaboration across all of these and other relevant research projects in order that can they maximise their collective impact. A series of open meetings will be held that will include other relevant stakeholders and will allow projects to share and benefit from each other's results, expertise and contacts. These meetings will also allow the participants to develop a common view or 'map' of this emerging research area and its associated societal challenges. This 'map' will help aid public understanding of the different aspects, contexts and issues concerning Digital Personhood. It will allow the results from the projects to be quickly located via the Network's website and applications which will be similarly structured. Finally we expect that it will inform and structure discussion of the issues and area at government and funding council level.
Planned Impact
The network will increase and generate impact by:
1. Providing an agreed structuring (taxonomy) of the Digital Personhood that will enable this research field to present a unified, well-organised body of activity which is aligned with key societal challenges.
2. Informing and facilitating development of RCUK strategy, by reporting via the DE PAB and the ICT SAT (both of which Chantler is a member), and by ensuring a fit of the Network's taxonomy with that of the DE.
3. Inviting targeted members of relevant strategic advisory committees (including ICT SAT, DE PAB, ESRC's Research Committee, EPSRC SAN and Foresight groups) to provide presentations to, and collaborate with, network members (e.g. Dr Paul Nightingale on policy issues and Prof Brian Collins on BIS).
4. Collaborating closely with Prof. Chris Hankin, chair of the Foresight Expert Panel on Identity, to help continue the BIS Foresight activity and engage its stakeholders. (Chris Hankin is keen to use the Network together with the results of the "Who do you think you are?" sandpit projects to maintain the visibility and impact of this area, and to continue collaboration with stakeholders in the security sector).
5. Actively seeking to advertise and obtain coverage of project results in both the electronic and traditional media (e.g. BBC Click, Guardian Technology, BBC Today programme, together with a wide range of electronic magazines and influential blogs) (e.g. BBC Click, Guardian Technology, BBC Today programme).
6. Providing rapid an intuitive access to Digital Personhood results, projects and challenges.
7. Sharing best practice across projects and facilitating impact generation (in a similar but much more extended manner to that used in the DE All Hands 2011 Impact Workshop organised by Chantler and Dr Chris Speed).
8. Actively engaging financial and business communities and their stakeholders via the £1.5M Network+ in New Economic Models (of which Chantler is a CI). This is creating a rapidly expanding network of practitioners and academics. Professor Roger Maull (PI) has exceptional contacts with a wide variety of Corporates e.g. CTOs of Aviva and other financial institutions. Roger is keen for NEMODE to be able to exploit the Digital Personhood work especially in the area of commodification and digital rights of personal data.
1. Providing an agreed structuring (taxonomy) of the Digital Personhood that will enable this research field to present a unified, well-organised body of activity which is aligned with key societal challenges.
2. Informing and facilitating development of RCUK strategy, by reporting via the DE PAB and the ICT SAT (both of which Chantler is a member), and by ensuring a fit of the Network's taxonomy with that of the DE.
3. Inviting targeted members of relevant strategic advisory committees (including ICT SAT, DE PAB, ESRC's Research Committee, EPSRC SAN and Foresight groups) to provide presentations to, and collaborate with, network members (e.g. Dr Paul Nightingale on policy issues and Prof Brian Collins on BIS).
4. Collaborating closely with Prof. Chris Hankin, chair of the Foresight Expert Panel on Identity, to help continue the BIS Foresight activity and engage its stakeholders. (Chris Hankin is keen to use the Network together with the results of the "Who do you think you are?" sandpit projects to maintain the visibility and impact of this area, and to continue collaboration with stakeholders in the security sector).
5. Actively seeking to advertise and obtain coverage of project results in both the electronic and traditional media (e.g. BBC Click, Guardian Technology, BBC Today programme, together with a wide range of electronic magazines and influential blogs) (e.g. BBC Click, Guardian Technology, BBC Today programme).
6. Providing rapid an intuitive access to Digital Personhood results, projects and challenges.
7. Sharing best practice across projects and facilitating impact generation (in a similar but much more extended manner to that used in the DE All Hands 2011 Impact Workshop organised by Chantler and Dr Chris Speed).
8. Actively engaging financial and business communities and their stakeholders via the £1.5M Network+ in New Economic Models (of which Chantler is a CI). This is creating a rapidly expanding network of practitioners and academics. Professor Roger Maull (PI) has exceptional contacts with a wide variety of Corporates e.g. CTOs of Aviva and other financial institutions. Roger is keen for NEMODE to be able to exploit the Digital Personhood work especially in the area of commodification and digital rights of personal data.
People |
ORCID iD |
Mike Chantler (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Bagnall G
(2014)
Digital Personhood Research Landscape (Impact)
Methven C
(2015)
EMoTICON and Digital Personhood Meeting
Padilla S
(2017)
Understanding Concept Maps
Methven T
(2014)
Research strategy generation
Bagnall G
(2014)
Digital Personhood Research Landscape
Methven T
(2015)
I Don't Think We've Met
Robb D
(2016)
Well-Connected
Description | This grant funds the Digital Personhood Network which provides network and impact activities for five RCUK DE funded sandpit projects. The first Digital Personhood Network Meeting took place on the 6th and 7th of March 2014 with keynote presentations from Research Council staff, Professor Chris Hankin and Laura Hood from The Conversation, as well as updates on the five Digital Personhood sandpit projects. The sandpit projects cover a diverse range of Digital Personhood aspects, from the business of generating new socio-economic models, to dealing with multiple digital personas and significant life transitions. They involve academics and collaborators from a wide range of backgrounds, from microeconomics and anthropology, through to web science and law. The meeting was attended by a wide range of both project members and other stakeholders. Its purpose was to collectively generate a 'research landscape' for this area, and in addition identify potential joint impact activities. A further meeting of the Digital Personhood Network jointly with the Emoticon network took place on 9th - 10th September 2015. The meeting was attended by project members, research council staff and additionally a group of postgraduate research students. Its purpose was to update attendees on the progress of the projects, to identify research challenges and possibilities for future collaboration in the area. The output document from this meeting is listed in Narrative Impact. |
Exploitation Route | We hope that the meetings we helped organise will allow those interested in the work of the Digital Personhood Network and EMoTICON to get a fuller understanding of the interests of academics working in these areas, the current state of the art, and of possible future collaborations. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Government Democracy and Justice |
URL | http://www.digitalpersonhood.org/meetings.php |
Description | The first network's meeting produced two outputs: 1. Digital Personhood Research Landscape 2. Digital Personhood Research Landscape (Impact) These are available from http://www.well-sorted.org/explore/FirstDigitalPersonhood/documents/DPNDocReleaseV1.pdf and http://www.well-sorted.org/explore/FirstDigitalPersonhood/documents/DPNImpactReleaseV1.pdf respectively The Joint Emoticon/Digital Personhood Network Meeting September 2015 produced an output document. This is available from: http://www.well-sorted.org/explore/EmoticonDigitalPersonhoodMeeting2015/documents/DPNEMoTICONDocReleaseV1.pdf |
First Year Of Impact | 2015 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
Description | EMoTICON and Digital Personhood Meeting |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | The joint Digital Personhood and Emoticon Network Meeting took place on the 9th & 10th of September 2015 with presentations from Research Council staff, updates on the Digital Personhood and Emoticon (Empathy and Trust in Communicating Online) projects, and networking sessions. The Digital Personhood projects cover a diverse range of topics, from the business of generating new socio-economic models, to dealing with multiple digital personas and significant life transitions. They involve academics and collaborators from a wide range of backgrounds, from microeconomics and anthropology, through to web science and law. The EMoTICON (Empathy and Trust in Communicating Online) projects explore how trust and empathy occur in, and subsequently shape, online communities. They were established to help develop greater understanding of how empathy and trust are developed, maintained, transformed and lost in social media interactions. The meeting was attended by project members, research council staff and additionally a group of postgraduate research students (invited by Dr John Vines and Dr Karen Salt). Its purpose was to update attendees on the progress of the projects, to identify research challenges and possibilities for future collaboration in the area. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
URL | http://www.digitalpersonhood.org/meetings/edpm-sep2015.php |
Description | EPSRC Impact Plan Topic Model analysis for EPSRC Council meeting |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Topic model analysis of the impact plans of 5,000 EPSRC research projects - in relation to the Healthy, Connected, Resilient and Prosperous Nation strategic themes. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | First Digital Personhood Meeting |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | The first Digital Personhood Network Meeting took place on the 6th & 7th of March 2014 with keynote presentations from Research Council staff, Professor Chris Hankin and Laura Hood from The Conversation, as well as updates on the five Digital Personhood sandpit projects. The sandpit projects cover a diverse range of Digital Personhood aspects, from the business of generating new socio-economic models, to dealing with multiple digital personas and significant life transitions. They involve academics and collaborators from a wide range of backgrounds, from microeconomics and anthropology, through to web science and law. The meeting was attended by a wide range of both project members and other stakeholders. Its purpose was to collectively generate a 'research landscape' for this area, and in addition identify potential joint impact activities. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
URL | http://www.digitalpersonhood.org/meetings/dpnm-mar2014.php |
Description | Further Well Sorted meetings (now over 100 meetings and approaching 10,000 ideas) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Further Well Sorted meetings organised (@UK and Chinese universities, UK Research Councils and InnovateUK) see https://www.well-sorted.org/ |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016,2017 |
URL | https://www.well-sorted.org/ |
Description | Further Well Sorted meetings - Used for over 200 meetings with over 15,000 ideas. Used by 5 research councils, InnovateUK, and 50 UK and international universities |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Well Sorted - support tools for strategy meetings of 20-100 senior stakeholders. It enables between 20 and 100 stakeholders to remotely contribute and jointly structure a research landscape or roadmap in an open, amicable, and democratic manner. The materials and groupings generated allow rapid organisation of focussed breakouts. We estimate that this tool improves the productivity of larger meetings by a factor of three and reduces the load on the organiser by a factor of 50. We engaged with EPSRC, ESRC, NERC, AHRC, MRC, InnovateUK, and 2 cross-research council funded projects (NEMODE and Digital Personhood under the Digital Engagement banner) in order to increase the use of Well Sorted to improve the stakeholder experience at meetings. In addition, we provided training (via two RCUK-wide seminars at Polaris House) to RCUK staff so they could hold their own meetings using the Well Sorted tool, and created new tools in order to help them in-meeting, as well as pre-meeting. We ran a RCUK-wide Well Sorted Meeting Owner's Workshop to discuss Well Sorted and get feedback on future developments and current best practice. In total Well Sorted has now been used for 205 studies, with over 3,800 sorts being performed on almost 15,000 items. It has also been used by over 50 universities (in the UK and internationally). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016,2017,2018 |
URL | http://www.well-sorted.org |
Description | InnovateUK strategy development meetiing |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Well Sorted event for InnovateUK |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
Description | Well Sorted Cited in Two National Funding Calls |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | The Well Sorted tool and process has been cited in two national funding calls (Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security in the Digital Economy and New Approaches to Data Science) as it was used to help scope the area the calls included. Well Sorted's use in the two EPSRC consultations can be found here: https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/files/newsevents/events1/crosssatbigdataworkshopnotes/ and https://www.well-sorted.org/explore/DESM2014/documents/DESMDocRelease1.0.pdf The calls these lead to can be found here: https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/newapproachestodatascience/ and https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/trustidentityprivacysecurity/ |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015 |
URL | http://www.well-sorted.org |