The Effects of the Internet on Moral Decision Making

The internet has, for better or worse, allowed for the quick spreading, archiving, and retrieval of information on a scale not even considered possible for most of human history. Given this massive technological change, and the way it has come to shape our lives, it should be no surprise that there is an entire field of psychology dedicated to measuring the effects of the internet on people: Cyberpsychology. While there is a subsection of this field that investigates moral decision making, it most often focuses on how moral decisions are made while using the internet.

Through this PhD, I plan to explore the possibility that using the internet, being exposed to the possibility of learning anything and reaching anyone, may cause some people to begin thinking of the full chain of consequences of their actions rather than just those that directly affect themselves. Notably, this includes how such decision making processes are affected outside of the online context.

I think through this lens we might be able to predict (or even encourage) moral shifts in our society. Increasingly people are employing ideas of ethical consumerism; a large element in the growing concept of climate justice is empathy and duty to people you'll never meet.

Do the consequences of your actions on someone half the world away reflect on you? Does that change if you're able to create direct links between your action and the consequence? We are all able to know what the furthest consequences of a purchasing decision are; Do we have an obligation to learn the full extent of our impact on others we will never meet? These are all questions we answer as individuals, and this project is going to focus on what influences people's answers.

We will collaborate with over 40 partners drawn from across FMCG and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Smart Mobility; Finance; Enabling technologies; and Policy, Law and Society. These will benefit from engagement with our CDT through the following established mechanisms:

- Training multi-disciplinary leaders. Our partners will benefit from being able to recruit highly skilled individuals who are able to work across technologies, methods and sectors and in multi-disciplinary teams. We will deliver at least 65 skilled PhD graduates into the Digital Economy.

- Internships. Each Horizon student undertakes at least one industry internship or exchange at an external partner. These internships have a benefit to the student in developing their appreciation of the relevance of their PhD to the external societal and industrial context, and have a benefit to the external partner through engagement with our students and their multidisciplinary skill sets combined with an ability to help innovate new ideas and approaches with minimal long-term risk. Internships are a compulsory part of our programme, taking place in the summer of the first year. We will deliver at least 65 internships with partners.

- Industry-led challenge projects. Each student participates in an industry-led group project in their second year. Our partners benefit from being able to commission focused research projects to help them answer a challenge that they could not normally fund from their core resources. We will deliver at least 15 such projects (3 a year) throughout the lifetime of the CDT.

- Industry-relevant PhD projects. Each student delivers a PhD thesis project in collaboration with at least one external partner who benefits from being able to engage in longer-term and deeper research that they would not normally be able to undertake, especially for those who do not have their own dedicated R&D labs. We will deliver at least 65 such PhDs over the lifetime of this CDT renewal.

- Public engagement. All students receive training in public engagement and learn to communicate their findings through press releases, media coverage.

This proposal introduces two new impact channels in order to further the impact of our students' work and help widen our network of partners.

- The Horizon Impact Fund. Final year students can apply for support to undertake short impact projects. This benefits industry partners, public and third sector partners, academic partners and the wider public benefit from targeted activities that deepen the impact of individual students' PhD work. This will support activities such as developing plans for spin-outs and commercialization; establishing an IP position; preparing and documenting open-source software or datasets; and developing tourable public experiences.

- ORBIT as an impact partner for RRI. Students will embed findings and methods for Responsible Research Innovation into the national training programme that is delivered by ORBIT, the Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (www.orbit-rri.org). Through our direct partnership with ORBIT all Horizon CDT students will be encouraged to write up their experience of RRI as contributions to ORBIT so as to ensure that their PhD research will not only gain visibility but also inform future RRI training and education. PhD projects that are predominantly in the area of RRI are expected to contribute to new training modules, online tools or other ORBIT services.