Societal and Policy Impact

Technology shapes society, but society by its pattern of adoption and appropriation of technology in turns shapes the technology. As examples, SnapChat and Instagram emerged as responses to social media technologies that many felt had been designed to share information too widely by default and were too complex to manage.

As societies react and impose their views on companies and citizens through regulation and policies, our research to support the Interpretation of human data – in particular around privacy and data control – involves working within the policy arena as independent experts, in order to encourage policy debate and inform regulation.

New technology leads to disrupted markets and the need for constant review of the relevant regulations within those markets. On one side to foster innovation, on another to protect consumers and finally to encourage economic growth and competitiveness. Our role working with regulators involves translating the insights from our research to better enable them to understand ways in which this complex situation can be navigated.

Privacy and Ethics – use of the Internet and social media

Regulatory challenges of emerging data drive technologies

The CharIoT project

Data driven ways to characterise human behaviour