The ‘Yes’ camp has its work cut out if it’s going to persuade Labour affiliates to vote for Scottish independence

As the vote on Scottish independence gets closer, the polls are steadily narrowing. The Yes camp believes that to win the referendum they need to persuade enough Labour affiliates to back an independent Scotland. Craig McAngus examines data on Labour affiliates’ attitudes with regards devolution of more powers and constitutional change in Scotland more widely

We are entering an era in which multi-party coalitions are the norm rather than the exception

On its own, the fact that the 2010 general election produced a coalition government does not tell us much. But Josh Cowls argues that a repeat experience in 2015, and a second coalition government with a broad and diverse mandate, would herald the end of single-party government in the UK

What the Thornberry affair tells us about politicians online

Emily Thornberry was forced to resign as shadow Attorney General after her now infamous tweet of white van parked outside a house draped in England flags. The Thornberry affair is evidence that what many see as the trend towards the increasingly professionalised, stage-managed, spin-doctored presentation of British politicians has not yet fully spread to online social platforms like Twitter, argues Josh Cowls

Kultura brytyjskiej sieci web

The Author presents a British project – BUDDAH in which scientists used archived content and downloaded from the web to conduct humanistic scientific research. It addressed the claim if there is a point in archiving of websites for research. The article shows multitude of methodological approaches, case studies and technical tools which were created to conduct these researches.Autor przedstawia brytyjski projekt BUDDAH, który polegał na tym, że naukowcy korzystając ze zgromadzonych zasobów archiwalnych pobranych z sieci robili humanistyczne badania naukowe. Chodzi­ło o stwierdzenie, czy jest sens w archiwizacji stron internetowych w celach badawczych. W artykule opisano wiele różnych badań, podejść metodologicznych, studiów przypadków oraz narzędzi technicznych, które stworzono, by zrealizować te badania

Constitutional metaphors: Facebook’s “supreme court” and the legitimation of platform governance

Who governs—and who should govern—online communication? Social media companies, international organizations, users, or the state? And by what means? A range of rhetorical devices have been used to simplify the complexities associated with the governance of online platforms. This includes “constitutional metaphors”: metaphorical allusions to traditional political concepts such as statehood, democracy, and constitutionalism. Here, we empirically trace the ascent of a powerful constitutional metaphor currently employed in the news media discourse on platform governance: characterizations of Facebook’s Oversight Board (OB) as a “supreme court.” We investigate the metaphor’s descriptive suitability and question its normative and political ramifications. We argue that uncritical characterizations of the OB as Facebook’s “supreme court” obscure its true scope and purpose. In addition, we argue that appropriating the socio-cultural symbolism and hence political legitimacy of a supreme court and mapping it onto a different type of actor poses a threat to responsible platform governance.Peer Reviewe

Mapping the UK Webspace: Fifteen Years of British Universities on the Web

This paper maps the national UK web presence on the basis of an analysis of the .uk domain from 1996 to 2010. It reviews previous attempts to use web archives to understand national web domains and describes the dataset. Next, it presents an analysis of the .uk domain, including the overall number of links in the archive and changes in the link density of different second-level domains over time. We then explore changes over time within a particular second-level domain, the academic subdomain .ac.uk, and compare linking practices with variables, including institutional affiliation, league table ranking, and geographic location. We do not detect institutional affiliation affecting linking practices and find only partial evidence of league table ranking affecting network centrality, but find a clear inverse relationship between the density of links and the geographical distance between universities. This echoes prior findings regarding offline academic activity, which allows us to argue that real-world factors like geography continue to shape academic relationships even in the Internet age. We conclude with directions for future uses of web archive resources in this emerging area of research.Comment: To appear in the proceeding of WebSci 201

Prolegomena to a white paper on an ethical framework for a good AI society

That AI will have a major impact on society is no longer in question. Current debate turns instead on how far this impact will be positive or negative, for whom, in which ways, in which places, and on what timescale. In order to frame these questions in a more substantive way, in this prolegomena we introduce what we consider the four core opportunities for society offered by the use of AI, four associated risks which could emerge from its overuse or misuse, and the opportunity costs associated with its under use. We then offer a high-level view of the emerging advantages for organisations of taking an ethical approach to developing and deploying AI. Finally, we introduce a set of five principles which should guide the development and deployment of AI technologies. The development of laws, policies and best practices for seizing the opportunities and minimizing the risks posed by AI technologies would benefit from building on ethical frameworks such as the one offered here

The AI gambit — leveraging artificial intelligence to combat climate change: opportunities, challenges, and recommendations

In this article we analyse the role that artificial intelligence (AI) could play, and is playing, to combat global climate change. We identify two crucial opportunities that AI offers in this domain: it can help improve and expand current understanding of climate change and it contribute to combating the climate crisis effectively. However, the development of AI also raises two sets of problems when considering climate change: the possible exacerbation of social and ethical challenges already associated with AI, and the contribution to climate change of the greenhouse gases emitted by training data and computation-intensive AI systems. We assess the carbon footprint of AI research, and the factors that influence AI’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in this domain. We find that the carbon footprint of AI research may be significant and highlight the need for more evidence concerning the trade-off between the GHG emissions generated by AI research and the energy and resource efficiency gains that AI can offer. In light of our analysis, we argue that leveraging the opportunities offered by AI for global climate change whilst limiting its risks is a gambit which requires responsive, evidence-based and effective governance to become a winning strategy. We conclude by identifying the European Union as being especially well-placed to play a leading role in this policy response and provide 13 recommendations that are designed to identify and harness the opportunities of AI for combating climate change, while reducing its impact on the environment

Digital Phenotyping and Sensitive Health Data: Implications for Data Governance

Mobile and wearable devices, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, increasingly enable the continuous collection of physiological and behavioural data that permit inferences about users’ physical and mental health. Growing consumer adoption of these technologies has reduced the cost of generating clinically meaningful data. This can help reduce medical research costs and aid large-scale studies. However, the collection, processing, and storage of data comes with significant ethical, security, and data governance considerations. A complex ecosystem is developing, with the need for collaboration among researchers, healthcare providers, and a broad range of entities across public and private sectors, some of which are not traditionally associated with healthcare. This has raised important questions in the literature regarding the role of the individual as a patient, customer, research participant, researcher, and user when consenting to data processing in this ecosystem. Here, we use the emerging concept of “digital phenotyping” to highlight key lessons for data governance which draw on parallels with the history of genomics research, while highlighting areas where digital phenotyping will require novel governance frameworks.I.P.P. work is supported by GlaxoSmithKline and EPSRC through an iCase fellowship (17100053); D.S. work is supported by the Embiricos Trust Scholarship of Jesus College Cambridge, and EPSRC through Grant DTP (EP/N509620/1); J.C. is the recipient of a doctoral scholarship from The Alan Turing Institute and J.M. is supported by the Wellcome Trust