911 research outputs found

    Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

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    This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    Ethnographies of Collaborative Economies across Europe: Understanding Sharing and Caring

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    "Sharing economy" and "collaborative economy" refer to a proliferation of initiatives, business models, digital platforms and forms of work that characterise contemporary life: from community-led initiatives and activist campaigns, to the impact of global sharing platforms in contexts such as network hospitality, transportation, etc. Sharing the common lens of ethnographic methods, this book presents in-depth examinations of collaborative economy phenomena. The book combines qualitative research and ethnographic methodology with a range of different collaborative economy case studies and topics across Europe. It uniquely offers a truly interdisciplinary approach. It emerges from a unique, long-term, multinational, cross-European collaboration between researchers from various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, geography, business studies, law, computing, information systems), career stages, and epistemological backgrounds, brought together by a shared research interest in the collaborative economy. This book is a further contribution to the in-depth qualitative understanding of the complexities of the collaborative economy phenomenon. These rich accounts contribute to the painting of a complex landscape that spans several countries and regions, and diverse political, cultural, and organisational backdrops. This book also offers important reflections on the role of ethnographic researchers, and on their stance and outlook, that are of paramount interest across the disciplines involved in collaborative economy research

    Measuring the impact of COVID-19 on hospital care pathways

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    Care pathways in hospitals around the world reported significant disruption during the recent COVID-19 pandemic but measuring the actual impact is more problematic. Process mining can be useful for hospital management to measure the conformance of real-life care to what might be considered normal operations. In this study, we aim to demonstrate that process mining can be used to investigate process changes associated with complex disruptive events. We studied perturbations to accident and emergency (A &E) and maternity pathways in a UK public hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-incidentally the hospital had implemented a Command Centre approach for patient-flow management affording an opportunity to study both the planned improvement and the disruption due to the pandemic. Our study proposes and demonstrates a method for measuring and investigating the impact of such planned and unplanned disruptions affecting hospital care pathways. We found that during the pandemic, both A &E and maternity pathways had measurable reductions in the mean length of stay and a measurable drop in the percentage of pathways conforming to normative models. There were no distinctive patterns of monthly mean values of length of stay nor conformance throughout the phases of the installation of the hospital’s new Command Centre approach. Due to a deficit in the available A &E data, the findings for A &E pathways could not be interpreted

    The Informal Screen Media Economy of Ukraine

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    This research explores informal film translation (voice over and subtitling) and distribution (pirate streaming and torrenting) practices in Ukraine, which together comprise what I call the informal screen media economy of Ukraine. This study addresses wider issues of debate around the distinct reasons media piracy exists in non-Western economies. There is already a considerable body of research on piracy outside of the traditional anti-piracy discourse, one that recognises that informal media are not all unequivocally destructive nor that they are necessarily marginal, particularly in non-Western countries. Yet, there remain gaps in the range of geographies and specific types of pirate practices being studied. Furthermore, academics often insufficiently address the intricate conditions of the context within which a given pirate activity is undertaken. Finally, whereas many researchers talk about pirates, considerably fewer talk to them. This project sets out to address these gaps. Specifically, I examine the distinct practicalities of the informal screen media practices in Ukraine through netnographic observations of pirate sites and in-depth interviews with the Ukrainian informal screen media practitioners. I explore their notably diverse motivations for engaging in these activities and how they negotiate their practices with the complex economic, cultural, and regulatory context of Ukraine. I find that, contrary to common perceptions, the Ukrainian pirates do not oppose the copyright law but operate largely within and around it. A more important factor in piracy in Ukraine instead is the economics of the Ukrainian language. This is reflected in the language exclusivity inherent to most Ukrainian pirate distribution platforms as well as in the motives of some informal translators, for whom their practice is a form of language activism. Overall, I argue for a more holistic approach to researching the informal space of the media economy, especially in non-Western contexts, one that recognises the heterogeneity of this space and explores accordingly intricate factors behind its existence. In addition, this project offers a methodological contribution by providing a detailed reflection on the use of ethnographic methods to study a pirate economy in a non-Western, non-anglophone country

    Fringe platforms: An analysis of contesting alternatives to the mainstream social media platforms in a platformized public sphere

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    Social media companies are ubiquitous in our social lives and public debate. They provide spaces for discussion and grant us access to journalism. In his 1962 Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Jürgen Habermas described how the public sphere was transformed through the introduction of modern communication systems. With the advent of social media platforms, the public sphere has transformed again through ‘platformization’. Platformization is the process by which Big Tech companies infiltrate infrastructures, economic processes and governmental frameworks of entire public sectors, structuring them around their own practices and logics. This dissertation studies the contemporary platformized public sphere, not by focusing at the center of the public sphere, but by looking at the edges of the platform ecology, where radical or counter platform technology are situated. I do this through the concept of ‘fringe platforms’, which are defined as; alternative platform services that are established as an explicit critique of the ideological premises and practices of mainstream platform services, which strive to cause a shift in the norms of the platform ecology they contest by offering an ideologically different technology. One such platform is alt-right microblogging service Gab.com, which was subjected to a process of 'deplatformization' in 2018, when its user base was implicated in white supremacist terrorism. Deplatformization refers to tech companies’ efforts to reduce toxic content by pushing back controversial platforms and their communities to the edges of the ecosystem by denying them access to the basic infrastructural services required to function online. By studying Gab through three case studies this dissertation poses the following research questions: What is the role of fringe social media platforms in a platformized public sphere? What hierarchies and shifts in power do they signify? And how can they inform us about the platform ecosystem? In the first case study, I explore Gab as an ecosystem, and conclude that the study of fringe platforms entails a more explicit role in the analyses for a platform’s self-positioning and narrative, as well as a shift in focus from a platform as an ecosystem towards a lens that takes into account the (infra)structural consequences of a platform as part of an ecosystem of services. In the second and third case study, I oblige to this conclusion and examine Gab as part of the platform ecosystem, shifting the analytical lens to the power dynamics and infrastructures of the platformized public sphere. There, I conclude that deplatformization demonstrates how the power and influence of private technology platforms reaches far beyond their own boundaries, which reveals platform power as infrastructural and rule-setting power. In the conclusion chapter, I argue that the aforementioned fringe lens is useful, not only for the analysis of fringe platforms, but also for the platformized public sphere as a whole, as it makes the structures and infrastructures of the platformized public sphere visible; highlights power and discourse; focuses on dynamics, conflict and breakdown; and incorporates the dominant and democratically productive as well as the marginal and illiberal, in its analyses

    Promoting social innovation and solidarity through transformative processes of thought and action. A lifetime for social change. Tribute to Susanne Elsen

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    Against the background of current crises and fundamental social questions, this edited volume collects contributions that touch upon aspects of social innovation and eco-social transformation in the fields of social work, education, community development and social and solidarity economy. Their common thread and the volume\u27s overall focus is on transformative and transdisciplinary approaches to research and practice – ways Susanne Elsen has encouraged throughout her career – pointing out her forward-looking contribution not only to social work but far beyond. The volume addresses scholars, students, policy makers, and a broader readership interested in tackling current sustainability challenges by innovating solidarity systems and fostering bottom-up processes of eco-social transformation

    DESIGNING BLOCKCHAIN BASED NON-FUNGIBLE TOKEN CERTIFICATE SHARING FRAMEWORK

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    The sharing of academic achievement certificates and credentials requires enhanced security measures to ensure faultless and fraud-free practices, while also prioritizing data trust and user privacy. It is crucial to provide convenience and secure control over access rights based on user roles. Traditionally, educational institutions issue hard copy certificates to students who have fulfilled the prerequisites. However, when it comes to sharing validated certificates, especially for students pursuing higher studies, different issuers follow varied approaches. The traditional method of mailing certificates involves time-consuming and costly back-and-forth involvement with universities. Similarly, email-based approaches raise concerns regarding trust and authenticity. In all of these approach there exist intermediaries that are need for verification and validation. Existing sharing platforms restrict student's control over their data and limit the validation process. Moreover, once a certificate is shared through these methods, students often lose control over its further usage and distribution, which is not an ideal approach. Until recently, there was no standardized approach to accurately monitor and verify the sharing of certificates, including the sender, recipient, and conditions. However, with the emergence of distributed ledger technologies, specifically designed for NFTs, a decentralized peer-to-peer network has now become the most efficient solution to address these challenges. This technology enables secure and verifiable sharing of certificates, ensuring transparency, trust, and greater control for students over their credentials. By utilizing NFTs, students can retain ownership and control over their certificates even after sharing them, thereby eliminating the concerns of loss of control and unauthorized distribution. To achieve this, a distributed application layer was added on top of the centralized system to create a more feasible and practical approach. This study focuses on utilizing a permission-less blockchain, specifically the public network of the Ethereum blockchain, to develop a secure data sharing framework. The research proposes an architecture and delves into the necessary components and factors to consider during the design and implementation of the system. The aim is to provide students with complete ownership and permanent access to their digital certificates, which are verified by the university and accepted by employers. This framework supports immutability, authenticity, enhanced security, trusted records and is a promising means to share academic certificates involving students, universities and employers. The framework is evaluated via a user study. The extended Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) and a Trust-Privacy Security Model are used to evaluate the usability of the NFT-framework. The evaluation allows uncovering the role of different factors affecting user intention to adopt certificate-sharing platforms. The result of the evaluation point to guidelines and methods for embedding privacy, user transparency and drivers of using the application
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