- New £4 million research network to explore how to ensure that digital tech is good for society and the economy
- University of Sheffield will host the ESRC Digital Good Network (DGN), which will be led by a consortium of researchers and stakeholders from across the UK
- The network will look at how to limit the negative effects that some digital technologies have, and how to ensure they are developed and used in ways which promote equity, sustainability and collective wellbeing
- The DGN will create a new 'Digital Good Index', to evaluate digital innovations to ensure they result in good societal outcomes.
A new 'Digital Good Network' will explore how digital technologies can be used in ways that benefit people, society and the economy.
The ESRC Digital Good Network (DGN) will be hosted by the University of Sheffield and will be led by a consortium of universities and cross-sector stakeholders including, the BBC and Birmingham Museums Trust.
Funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the DGN will bring researchers together across disciplines and sectors to generate new insights into the 'digital good', and provide digital technology developers, companies and policymakers with the know-how to ensure technologies contribute to the public good.
The DGN will focus on three societal challenges that are crucial to envisioning good relationships with, and through, digital technologies:
- equity: because digital relationships take place in conditions of structural inequity
- sustainability: because planetary challenges like climate change demand that our digital relationships are sustainable
- resilience: because wellbeing, wellness and coping strategies in the face of pandemics, political conflicts, natural disasters, digital misinformation, online hate are important to realise the digital good
Society increasingly relies on digital technologies, with many having become integral to people's relationships and experiences. Institutions use technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make their relationships with the public more efficient; digital platforms can be used to share information and connect to others; and apps are increasingly used to administer our lives.
But those same technologies can also discriminate, or be used to harass or mislead - even the most well-intentioned technologies can end up doing harm; as all of our relationships with digital technologies have both positive and negative effects on the planet.
