More-than-human digital civics
Civic discourse and legislation does not just effect human members of society, it has effects on non-human members of a community. These non-human members often have online personas created by human caregivers, which can anthropomorphise them and not fully reflect their species’ characteristics.
We will be hosting a workshop co-located with 11th edition of the International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), which will explore two key questions:
- Do companion animals have a role as digital citizens and what safeguards can be put in place to ensure their needs are represented accurately? And,
- How can we ensure that non-human stakeholders are represented equally in civic discourse?
This workshop will explore these through the lens of the recent XLBully legislation and XLBully representation online, and plans to bring together researchers, practitioners and stakeholders from across ACI, HCI and Digital Civics communities. The workshop will be located in the Advanced Research Center, Glasgow University on 2nd December 2024. For more information, please see the website.
This ongoing project is a collaborative effort involving Lauren Scott, Anna Carter, and Shaun Lawson from the Centre for Digital Citizens, Northumbria University; Sam Gowland and Dirk van der Linden, and Grace Handley, Northumbria University.
What is the impact?
This project resulted in the ACM publication of a Workshop paper at the 2024 annual ACI Conference on Animal Computer Interaction.
- Sam Gowland, Lauren Scott, Grace Hanley, Anna R L Carter, Shaun Lawson and Dirk Van der Linken. 2024. More than Human Digital Civics. In Eleventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI’24), December 2-5, 2024, Glasgow, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA.