Information School News

 The pharmaceutical industry, the Higher Education sector and the world of the arts may seem like three very disparate areas but, along with almost all arenas of modern life, all three are heavily entwined with technology. Machine learning, data mining and AI in particular are hot topics in the information and technology spheres right now, and each of the aforementioned sectors has their own way of interacting with it. The AHRC-funded project ‘Patterns in Practice’ - which is led by Senior Lecturer Dr Jo Bates from Sheffield’s Information School, working with Professor Helen Kennedy from the University’s Department of Sociological Studies and Dr Erinma Ochu, Associate Professor of Immersive Media at UWE Bristol, as well as Dr Itzelle Medina Perea and Dr Monika Fratczak working as postdoctoral researchers in the Information School - aims to explore how the beliefs, values and feelings of practitioners from the pharmaceutical, education and arts sectors shape how they engage with mac...

Digital Data Flows and the COVID-19 Pandemic - should we be paying more attention?  As a third of the global population experiences some form of lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world are adapting to new ways of living and working, and looking for radical solutions to live with the virus until some form of immunity develops. Digital technologies and the data they process have been central to this response. The production and circulation of digital data is constrained by a complex web of deeply politicised social, cultural, legal, economic and technical factors. These constraints – or, “data frictions” - can be beneficial or problematic, and whether a particular friction is one or the other is often subject to significant debate. Shifts in the nature of data frictions have the potential to influence how societies function at the most fundamental level – they shape the relationship between state and citizens, the management of worker...

New Paper: Integrating FATE/Critical Data Studies into Data Science Curricula: Where are we going and how do we get there? A number of Information School academics have published a new paper for the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. The paper (published by Dr Jo Bates, Dr David Cameron, Dr Alessandro Checco, Professor Paul Clough, Dr Frank Hopfgartner, Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar, Dr Laura Sbaffi, Dr Peter Stordy, and Dr Antonio de la Vega de León) reflects on the ethical and practical aspects of teaching critical data science to inform future data practices & make them fair.  Abstract:  There have been multiple calls for integrating topics related to fairness, accountability, transparency, ethics (FATE) and social justice into Data Science curricula, but little exploration of how this might work in practice. This paper presents the findings of a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) engaged in by a MSc Data Science teaching team b...

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Atlanta, USA to attend ACM FAT* - an interdisciplinary conference that addresses issues of Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in Machine Learning. Officially, I was there on the hunt for potential papers and authors to invite to submit their work to Online Information Review . However, the FAT* field is also closely related to my research interests around the politics of data and algorithms, and my teaching on the Information School’s MSc Data Science . I was keen to check out what was happening in the FAT* community, and feed my findings back into my teaching and into two new projects I am working on in this field: CYCAT & supervising a new PhD student – Ruth Beresford – whose research will investigate algorithmic bias in collaboration with the Department for Work and Pensions. I was privileged to hear a number of great papers – the best of which engaged critically with issues of social context and justice. My two favourite pa...

Dr Jo Bates and Professor Paul Clough from the Information School attended the launch of the new H2020 funded CyCAT (Cyprus Centre for Algorithmic Transparency) project in Nicosia 8-9 October 2018. Jo and Paul are investigators on CyCAT , a project hosted by the Open University of Cyprus (OUC), which aims to educate and raise awareness of ways in which data analytics and algorithmic processes can affect people's access to and interactions with information. The project will help promote digital literacy around algorithmic bias, transparency and fairness, a topic gaining considerable attention and media attention. The CyCAT project started 1st October 2018 and will run for 3 years. OUC is the lead partner of the project with additional contributions coming from The University of Sheffield , the University of Haifa , the University of Trento (Università degli Studi di Trento), and The University of Edinburgh.

From Director of Research Professor Paul Clough: I am delighted to announce that Alessandro Checco and Jo Bates (together with Gianluca Demartini) have won the Best Paper award at the prestigious Human Computation or HCOMP 2018 conference for the following paper: Checco A, Bates J & Demartini G (2018) All That Glitters is Gold -- An Attack Scheme on Gold Questions in Crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing. Abstract here; http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/130654/ Not only is it a significant achievement to even be accepted at this conference it is an outstanding achievement to be nominated for Best Paper and then to win it is incredible. Alessandro and Gianluca were awarded the prize at HComp 2018 . Alessandro had this to say about the paper and reviews: "Feedback from chairs was that they really liked the fact we opened a new direction (that is having workers using ML solutions on the employers). We will have the opportu...

Online Information Review, the international, ISI listed journal edited by Jo Bates, Andrew Cox, Robert Jäschke and Angela Lin from the Information School has just announced three Calls For Papers for Special issues on: Social Media Mining for Journalism http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/news_story.htm?id=7570 Lifelogging Behaviour and Practice http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=7544 Open-access mega-journals: Continuity and innovation in scholarly communication http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=7545

Information School Lecturer Dr Jo Bates has been invited to join the editorial board of Big Data and Society, the leading journal in the field of data studies. BD&S is published by SAGE and Dr Bates' term on the board is three years in duration. You can access the journal here .

The library and information association, CILIP, have recently launched a new publication for members of their organisation, entitled 'Information Professional'. Information School lecturers Dr Jo Bates and Paula Goodale and PhD student Penny Andrews are featured in the publication in an article about their research project 'The Secret Life of a Weather Datum'. The project aimed to pilot a new approach for better understanding and communicating how values and practice influence the transformation of weather data on its journey from production through various contexts of big data reuse. You can read the article here.

Earlier this month, Professor Paul Clough was interviewed on the first episode of Machine Minds, a podcast about the influence of technology in modern life. The episode, entitled 'Search Engine and Bias', looked at bias in search engines and Paul's input was based on work he undertook with Dr Jo Bates from the Information School and Jahna Otterbacher from Open University Cyprus. You can listen to the podcast here.