Expanding Knowledge
Oxford Brookes University (Gipsy Lane Campus)
Sharing the Knowledge: A Conceptual Discussion of Digital Dissemination Tools
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Goitom, Nassisse Solomon, Selam Abebe
Social science researchers have long deliberated on the challenges and possibilities associated with being an insider or an outsider in qualitative research. This is primarily because in qualitative research, the stories shared, how they are told and the narratives that get formed by the researcher are influenced by researchers positioning (social, political and economic). Drawing on the ‘insider’ experiential insights of three qualitative researchers who conducted 40 interviews with second-generation Ethiopian and Eritrean youth in Canada this paper revisits the insider-outsider discussion within both the research (data collection and analysis), and the knowledge dissemination process. First, the paper complicates binaries (insider-outsider; privileged-oppressed, us-them) and second, presents how both the research and knowledge dissemination process demonstrate the ways in which the researchers came to occupy the space in-between (Hellawell 2006). Critical reflections across various stages of the research process provided epistemological insights thus elucidating how the methodological direction of the study was relative to the positioning of the researcher on a continuum between the insider and outsider. This paper critically engages with these concepts, and how the continual state of fluidity in positioning allowed for knowledge dissemination process that goes beyond the conventional research outputs in the form of conference presentations and academic papers to one that is generated and driven by study participants (i.e. digital media).
Ethical Technology Assessment of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things among GEN Z Population in the Asia Pacific Region: The Case of the Philippines and Thailand View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Melvin Jabar
This Facebook-funded research examined the knowledge, perceptions, and experiences about the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) among the Generation Z population (born between 1997 and 2012/15; now 18-23 years old) in the Philippines and Thailand. A total of 1,499 Filipino and 1,060 Thai Gen Z students accomplished the online self-administered survey. Survey results revealed that GEN Z respondents from Thailand and the Philippines worry more about issues of privacy followed by social contact, autonomy and control, and human reproduction and health. However, Filipino respondents are more worried about both privacy and autonomy issues than their Thai respondent counterparts. Concerning privacy, both Filipino and Thai respondents worry about the possibility of becoming victims of identity theft. Moreover, both types of respondents are most bothered by the potential ability of AI and IoT to control people’s behavior beyond agency (individual capacity). Regarding social contact, Thai respondents are most worried about the impact of AI and IoT on decreasing face-to-face human interactions, while Filipino respondents are most worried about relationship conflict due to misinformation driven by misuse of AI and IoT. In terms of human reproduction and health, Filipino respondents are warier about the use of AI and IoT in assisted reproduction and in human sexual activities (e.g., use of sex robots). Overall, the Thai respondents seem to judge AI and IoT favorably more than their Filipino counterparts.
Plural Data Epistemologies: Implications for Interpretive Authority in Interdisciplinary STS Research View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robert Albro, Dena Plemmons
Reporting and reflecting on the outcomes of four interdisciplinary workshops funded by the US National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Studies (STS) Program between 2016 and 2022, we explore implications of competing understandings of data in the context of new developments in and expectations for data collection, management, and sharing. Specifically, we unpack and compare different sources of interpretive authority underwriting knowledge claims in interdisciplinary STS research generated by distinct epistemological starting points for what constitute data among big data researchers and ethnographers, and examine some consequences of these epistemological differences for future interdisciplinary work in STS. To date we have yet to adequately consider the implications of an interdisciplinary lack of consensus or clarity around often competing conceptions of what data are, and what makes data collection processes rigorous, as these inform typically interdisciplinary STS research methodologies. But these differences play a critical role in competing processes of sense-making, including how data are collected, classified, interpreted, archived, and made available to others. Against the background of the emergence of new technologies, practices, and ethics of archiving, circulation and sharing of data, therefore, we view the need to consider differing conceptions of what constitutes data as a necessary precursor to the interdisciplinary pursuit of such broader goals as open science and transparency.
