Thursday 18th May 2017, 2pm - 3.30pm
Seminar Room 1.06, Old Surgeons' Hall
(http://www.issti.ed.ac.uk/about/how_to_find_us)
Data Protection Attitudes: A Comparative study of Europe and Latin America
Yazmin Morlet Corti (1st year PhD student in Politics, University of Edinburgh)
This PhD project addresses how political cultures influence users’ behaviour online. Scholars indicate that privacy is interconnected with culture patterns (Cockcroft & Rekker, 2016; Milberg, Smith, & Burke, 2000). For the effects of this work, privacy is understood as individual control over personal information in different settings (Raab et al., 2011).
Political culture on an individual level has different ways of being conceptualized and measured (Lane, 1992; Wildavsky, 1987). The main focus of this project will combine a series of political culture values that observe levels of individualism (Elazar, 1987; Douglas, 1999; Hofstede, 2001; Mamadouh, 1999). In order to contextualize this, it will be necessary to incorporate trust (Inglehart & Baker, 2000) and privacy knowledge practices online (Malhotra, Kim, & Agarwal, 2004; Smith & Milberg, 1996).
These variables are motivated by Westin’s survey findings which suggest that individuals are pragmatic, meaning more open to give away information in exchange for personal gain. Scholars throughout the years have tried to refute this evidence, mainly because in practice people behave differently that what surveys indicate (Jin Park, 2008).
This comparative study will focus on users in Mexico and Spain. It will result in an online game simulation on user privacy behaviour. This tool is aimed to be both educational and will allow the comparison of user behaviour from these two countries. I expect users from a country which is more individualistic to be more exposed in regard to their privacy behaviour. This work will contribute in the field of data protection and behaviour in a comparative perspective.
Keywords: privacy, online behaviour, data protection, political culture, game simulation.
Decentralising the Internet of Things: reflexions on researching long-range wireless community networks
Andres Dominguez (1st year PhD student, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, University of Edinburgh)
The Internet of Things (IoT) comprises a complex assemblage of physical and virtual infrastructures as well as a diverse set of stakeholders. On one hand, large corporations and regulatory bodies develop technologies, negotiate standards and deploy infrastructure in a top-down manner with the goal of achieving critical masses of adopters and exploit market efficiencies. On the other hand, individuals and groups of users adopt, implement, configure or re-imagine technological offerings, influencing the system from the bottom-up. My doctoral research looks into communities of users employing open source methods and tools to innovate in the Internet of Things. In this talk, I provide an overview of The Things Network: a non-profit organisation that crowdsources the physical infrastructure of a decentralised long-range data network. By examining practitioners and communities of users involved with this initiative, the goal is to look at ways in which civic IoT applications go beyond one-off projects and prototypes into sustainable solutions. Next, I discuss the challenge of negotiating access and investigating hardware and software developers as well as technical leaders in the Do-it-Yourself IoT scene.
All students and staff welcome!