Designing for All: Trust and Inequalities in the Context of Data-driven Media

This studentship will form part of a multidisciplinary cohort of four ICASE researchers to
develop tools that ensure emerging data-driven digital media technologies are inclusive, fair
and socially-sustainable, so that technology and policy teams in the BBC and wider digital
economy can respond to the needs of marginalised and underserved audiences.
This particular studentship will research and develop methods and techniques to create
actionable insights from data from communities in order to advance good and trustworthy
applications of data in relation to media. These data may be derived from datasets describing
economic activity, health outcomes and media use. They will include the deployment of novel
data collection, around peoples' and communities' understanding, use, lived experience and
expectation of future consumer technologies. Techniques including data visualisation will be
developed to help users reflect on, engage with, and act upon in order to build trust in uses of
data, and better inform decision makers.
Data and AI are at the centre of the BBC technology and innovation plan and will transform
audiences' experiences in the future, but not everyone has equal access, or the same
knowledge or capacity to engage and to benefit. Critically, those at risk of this digital inequality
are the same people already experiencing social, cultural and economic marginalisation. As
part of the BBC's commitment to universality and inclusion, this research will contribute to
understanding and addressing key issues and barriers in digital inclusion. It will directly benefit
key areas of the BBC's innovation work spanning personalisation, flexible media, data
stewardship, and the design of new interactive and participatory forms of media.