Event Report: Digital worlds: contexts, concepts and methodological explorations

Issued on: Fri, 06 Nov 2020

On 3rd September, Thursday we co-hosted the research day event on Digital World with the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University and the European Centre for Advanced Studies (ECAS). More than 40 people attended the online event that ran for three hours with a brilliant line up of speakers.

The event was introduced by Prof James Conroy who discussed the importance and the relevance of exploring the interconnection of digital, social and culture in the current context of social media, democracy and the political scenarios being played out around the world.  Dr Happer spoke about the current manual online moderators of social media are overwhelmingly white-male and the concerns about the AI built on the pattern of their moderation reflecting the “shared moral values” of the group. This lead on to the discussion about manufacturing of consent and the lack of trust in traditional media and politicians. 

This was followed by exploring the idea and methods of intentional disconnection from digital as lifestyle choice using fashion, technology and fictional literature on this discourse. Prof Hoskins examined how digitalizing and digitally storing every little detail of our present and history we are over-bloating our past and not allowing our memories to settle. Our distraction with the past getting in the way of addressing the issues of the future and how digital memories are getting weaponised in war. But on a more positive exploration of the past of assistive technologies for assisting disabilities by Jan Müggenburg showed the evolutionary roots of non-text-based interfaces from point-and-click and touchscreen to natural language, gestures and eye-tracking. 

Müggenburg also introduced the idea of automation and machine being built to interact with humans as a component in its environment where the focus shifts from being user-centric to machine-centric for the engineers. This resonated in the conversation on automated logistics by the likes of Amazon where Beverungen talked about automated rooms operated by drones where people are not allowed. Dr Chalmers continued on the point of how AI is being used by upcoming entrepreneurs and SME in Scottish business landscape and on flattening organizations with fewer people controlling the AI. This lead on to discussions of job losses due to AI and Dr Wong talked about this causing instability and declining labour security on one hand for younger. But on the other hand, was the positive impact of digital, where young and marginalised communities could use technology and social media to mitigate being isolated and alienated from society. Dr Hirsu brought insight into how women in developing countries were seeking out digital literacies to help them transition their craft to self-designed workplace and the consequences and opportunities that arise from that.

The event also had methodology presentation from Dr Matt Hanchard and discussion on take-up and usage of Covid-19 contract tracing app from Dr Conrad. We thank Prof Bridgette Wessels from Social Digital change group and Prof Andreas Bernard from the Centre for Digital Culture for organizing and moderating the event. 

 

Lower-Saxony –Scotland Joint Forum 2020 

 This event was hosted through the Joint Forum that has been set up by the University of Glasgow and Leuphana University Lüneburg in cooperation with European Centre for Advanced Studies (ECAS). The aim is to use this forum as a platform for fostering academic exchange, collaborations and bringing researchers together from Scottish and Lower Saxonian universities.  

There is an open call for workshop and panel proposal. The aims of these workshops may be to explore current or new research, present existing partnerships or extend partnerships between universities or different academic disciplines within the Lower Saxony -Scotland region. The Forum is for platform for exchanging knowledge, student, PhD, projects and study programmes, collaborations, research for the following subject areas. 

  • Artificial intelligence 
  • Biology and chemistry 
  • Business and entrepreneurship 
  • Climate change and sustainability 
  • Digitisation and digitalisation 
  • Engineering 
  • Law and humanities 
  • Medicine 
  • Museum and theatre sciences 
  • Social and political sciences 

 

Call listings for proposal will be posted on the Joint Forum website but at this point, they are open to being contacted with event proposals. Further details can be found on their website.