AGENCY: Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms

Lead Research Organisation: University of Birmingham
Department Name: School of Computer Science

Abstract

The online world is a curious but uncertain world. It enriches many facets of life but at the same time exposes citizens to a variety of threats that may cause harm to them, their loved ones and to wider society. Many of these harms result from a complex interaction of societal processes driven by diverse stakeholders-we call these Complex Harms.

Consider for example smart homes, with devices that manage energy usage, CCTV cameras for the garage and increasingly integrated IT components throughout the house. With such technology, the dynamics in families may change, for instance offering monitoring capabilities. This may results in harms that may include domestic violence, loss of privacy and gathering of disproprotionately large sets of population data by large industries.

This raises a number of questions: What is the role of the individual, friends and family to mitigate potential harms? How can one work with the device provider to minimize harm? Should the law interfere? The AGENCY project will use a number of case studies to answer these questions: HealthTech, Identity Management, Smart Homes and Online Disinformation.

Complex harms such as above tend to happen to citizens, and, in most cases, they are not purposely caused or easily controlled by citizens. The AGENCY project believes firmly that establishing citizen agency is an absolutely necessary ingredient for any transformative approaches that resolve these complex harms. Citizens need to be empowered through agency-enhanching technologies, behaviours and processes to gain a sense of control, ownership, security, and consequently trust in their online activities.

Protecting against complex harms is a wicked problem because so many stakeholder are involved, and because many harms are unintended consequences of the practical use and evolution of technology. Therefore, mitigating complex harms requires interdisciplinary co-design principles, technology foundations and collaborative governance procedures to assure online citizen agency in the presence of multiple stakeholder interests. The project brings together computer science, user-centered design, business, psychology, sociology, legal and ethical experts.

If AGENCY succeeds, it will provide a profound understanding of the role of online agency in protecting citizens and will deliver collaborative methods, technological building blocks and scientifically grounded best practices for our society to provide more proactive and structured approaches to protecting citizens online.

Publications

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Olabode S (2023) Complex Online Harms and the Smart Home: A Scoping Review in SSRN Electronic Journal

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Olabode S (2023) Complex online harms and the smart home: A scoping review in Future Generation Computer Systems

Related Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Award Value
EP/W032481/1 31/03/2022 13/07/2022 £2,793,095
EP/W032481/2 Transfer EP/W032481/1 14/07/2022 30/03/2025 £2,674,250
 
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Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
URL https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/124223/html/
 
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Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
URL https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/128358/pdf/
 
Title MKPHOTO2023 
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Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
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URL https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/guardeec/mkphoto2023
 
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Country United Kingdom 
Sector Public 
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Start Year 2024
 
Title ARElight 
Description ARElight is an application for a granular view onto sentiments between mentioned named entities in texts. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2024 
Open Source License? Yes  
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Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
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Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://guardeec.github.io/UELA_workshop/index.html
 
Description Birmingham Tech Week 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
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Description Keynote at ValueTools conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
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Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Post-CHI summer school 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
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URL https://postchisummerschools.uol.de/usable-privacy-and-security/