Societal Impact Case Studies

Technology shapes society, but society by its pattern of adoption and appropriation of technology, in turn 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 – involved 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 of all ages, and finally to encourage economic growth and competitiveness. We worked with several partners in the industry sector, regulators and non profit organisations to translate insights from our research to better enable them to understand ways in which this complex situation could be navigated. 

Everything in Moderation https://www.horizon.ac.uk/project/everything-in-moderation/ 

Adaptive Podcasts: https://www.horizon.ac.uk/project/adaptive-podcasts/ 

Domesticating Electric Vehical Charging: https://www.horizon.ac.uk/project/domesticating-electric-vehicle-charging-devec/ 

New Forms of Public Value at the Edge: https://www.horizon.ac.uk/project/new-forms-of-public-value-at-the-edge-designing-for-hdi-and-trust-in-media-iot-futures/ 

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