Social Science of the Internet

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are witnessing the acceleration of digital data collection within cities in the service of public health. This acceleration fundamentally challenges and alters the social and lived experience of the city environment for its inhabitants and its users. Many governments, municipal and city planning organisations, often with private industry partners, installed these data collecting, tracing and mapping technologies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to assist in virus management at the urban level. In other cases, existing urban data technologies have been repurposed from their initial mission towards a renewed end-goal of virus management, requiring only back-end redevelopment. Often this repurposing of urban hardware and software goes unnoticed to the average city user, despite their key role as a unit of urban data measurement. Meanwhile, in academia, research has focused on the relative effectiveness of virus-management technologies at a population level, and the potential social or psychological effects upon the individual. Both the academic and the public sphere, are crucially lacking a longitudinal, social mapping of the installation and impact of urban data technologies on communities and urban space. My existing research in technology and designed spaces make me well-suited to address this issue. The aim of my project is, therefore, threefold. My first aim is to develop an original technological and sociological understanding of how the application and re-appropriation of existing and evolving urban data technologies affect urban spatiality. Secondly, I will evaluate the relative merits and risks of this urban data collection, beyond the predominant singular public health angle, to consider the impact on the urban population and potentially marginalised or at-risk actors and groups. The third aim is to deliver a set of best principles for data organisations for working with urban data technologies to deliver on better public health but also urban wellbeing that includes marginalised groups. This final, third aim will push my doctoral research beyond academic institutions, in order to inform designers, urban planners, data agencies and legislators, in order to assist in the production, deployment and reconfiguration of urban data technologies in an effective and equitable way. As I have worked extensively in the corporate space of design-thinking and innovation - often delivering toolkits and strategy recommendations through workshops and consultancy - I plan to enhance the impact of my research by maintaining my dialogue with industry and public health.