Digital research at Sussex : Digital and Social Media : University of Sussex

The following list highlights some of the externally funded Digital and Social Media projects currently being undertaken by Sussex Faculty.

Quantum Networking with Fibre-Coupled Ions

Dr Matthias K Keller
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

In the course of this project we will develop a system to deterministically transfer quantum information between distant nodes of a `quantum-network'. Using optical fibres as a carrier, quantum-bits (or qubits) of information will be transferred by exchange of single photons (light-particles) between atomic ions. This system is a fundamental building block for the quantum-network, which will one day connect quantum computers in the same way the internet does for present-day computers.

Single-photon exchanges are already used today to transmit information securely over long distances. This process, called `quantum communication', utilises the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics to foil any possibility of eavesdropping. Quantum effects can also be used to perform computations much faster than is currently possible with classical computers. In our project, we will combine the areas of quantum computation and quantum communication by building an efficient user-controlled interface (quantum link) between ions and photons and thus develop a crucial building block for the future quantum internet.

Better Made Up: Science fiction and innovation

Dr Caroline A Bassett, Professor Ed Steinmueller
National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts

Science or Speculative Fiction (SF) is an imaginative response to the world as it is and might be. Whilst there are many motives for its creation, it can be said to have a number of effects on the world of which it is part. To explore and map this array of influences, it is necessary to make some distinctions in order to create a project of manageable scope and practical value. Much science fiction is eschatological and, as such, provides important warnings about the consequences of staying on the same path of scientific and technological development, or cautions concerning the unintended consequences of profound technological change. These warnings influence the governance of research and, to some extent, its ambition and direction. We are minded, however, to take a more pragmatic approach, defined by four thematic areas of research in which the current state as well as the historical evolution of SF can be considered in relation to its interactions and impacts on other parts of society.

EPINET: Integrated Assessment of Societal Impacts of Emerging Science and Technology from within Epistemic Networks

Roger Stand, University of Bergen; Brain Wynne, Lancaster University; Dr Kathleen S O'Riordan, University of Sussex; Serge Gutwirth, Vrije Universität; Jeroen van der Sluis, Utrecht University; Angela Guimaraes Pereira, European Commission Joint Research Centre; Louis Lemkow, Autònoma Universitat Barcelona
European Union

EPINET introduces a new approach to promote integration of technology assessment (TA) methods. It will develop methods and criteria to be used for more socially robust and efficient practices on the interfaces between TA and the world of policy makers and innovators. At present, a large number of TA methodologies and practices exist. Many of these are based on varying- and sometimes conflicting, unclear- values, presuppositions, interests and commitments. This is problematic, insofar as differing conclusions and recommendations will follow from different methodologies and disciplines; hence the need for more integrated approaches. However, the irreducible difference of perspectives and plurality in the field of TA needs to be recognised and used as a resource; not a problem to be done away with. EPINET introduces the concept of epistemic networks as a way of conceptualising complex synthesis of methodologies would not do justice to the field and would risk negating progress already made. developments within emerging fields of sociotechnical innovation practices. It establishes a “soft” framework within which the plurality of different TA practices can be explored in a concerted and holistic manner. Four cases are investigated along with the development of this framework: wearable sensors, cognition for technical systems, synthetic meat and smart grids. “Integrating TA”, it is claimed, is a task for empirical investigation in which implicit values of TA methodologies, disciplines and practices are spelled out and placed in relation to the practices they are meant to assess. This is the context of innovation conceptualised through the concept of emerging and future epistemic networks. EPINET develops a holistic framework for integrating assessments through gradual co-production of methodologies and concepts (centrally that of “responsible innovation”) together with innovators and policy makers. The challenges of “integrating assessments”, we claim, can only be gradually worked out within such a holistic view of complex intersecting networks and practices.

The Newton Project

Professor Robert Iliffe
Arts and Humanities Research Council

Sir Isaac Newton is arguably the greatest scientist of all time. He was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian. His treatise Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, with further editions in 1713 and 1726, is considered to be the greatest single work in the history of science, and is the cornerstone of the modern physical sciences. On the Newton Project website we aim to bring together all of Newton’s writings in the areas of theology, alchemy, optics, mechanics and mathematics, as well as his correspondence and his work as Master of the Mint, and to make them freely available to everyone online.

Apart from the transcriptions of Newton’s writings, the most popular part of the site is the collection of biographies written about Newton in the 18th and 19th centuries. The vast bulk of this material has never been seen before by more than a handful of scholars, and represents the largest amount of new manuscript material for any individual published in the last century. This is all the more exciting as Newton was just as radical and brilliant in his non-scientific work (he was, for example, a deeply unorthodox religious heretic) as in his better-known research.Apart from the mammoth editorial task of making these texts available to hundreds of millions via the internet, which has involved solving numerous problems concerning the presentation of high-quality digital content, the major research question driving our activities has been to assess the sorts of relations that might exist between disparate areas of Newton’s work.

The core activity of the project consists of transcribing photocopies of original manuscripts and then encoding them so that they can be easily read by different web browsers. We currently have a three-person team working full time at Sussex, while a group in the USA is transcribing large parts of Newton’s alchemical papers. The project is two years away from completing the transcription of Newton’s theological writings (which amount to about 3.5 million words), but we are already looking for funding to complete the transcription of Newton’s optical writings and in particular, his preparatory work on the Principia Mathematica. Although many editions of printed text have appeared in the last century, historians have looked forward to accomplishing the much larger task of publishing and editing all the drafts of this masterwork. With sufficient funding we aim to have all these drafts transcribed by 2013, and a full edition of all of his writings online by 2015.

Visit The Newton Project website.

The Digital Stadium

Dr Ian J Wakeman, Dr Dan Chalmers
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Major sports events are ideal opportunities to exploit pervasive computing technologies to increase the quality of experience. As the penetration of smartphones continue, the customer can become the hub of their experience, linked to their ticket, their seat, their favourite food offerings, their modes of transport, and most importantly, to the sporting event on show. But there are many challenges to connecting everything inside the stadium. The numbers and density of people make it difficult to provide adequate bandwidth, which when combined with the concrete and steel construction of the stadium make network provision a serious technical challenge.

We propose to investigate the feasibility of connecting customers through a pocket switched network (PSN) to supplement existing network infra-structure, using the crowd's smartphones to build a mesh network to provide the dense coverage needed to make an Internet of Things a reality in the stadium. Delay tolerant protocols based on social interactions have been widely examined in research, but we believe that this would be one of the first deployments, allowing the validation of the underpinning ideas. This would also provide the first opportunity to investigate which services can be provided that customers want and how we can ensure that users' privacy concerns are met, given data travels over third party phones. Having answered these questions in our feasibility study, we will deploy and test the infra-structure and selected applications over a number of matches within Brighton and Hove Albion's Amex Community Stadium.

This project is the epitomy of a New Economic Model project, working with stakeholders to develop viable ways to build services over novel networking technologies.

RCUK Digital Economy Community and Culture network

Dr Helen Thornham, University of Leeds; Dr Caroline A Bassett, University of Sussex; Professor Clare Wallace, University of Aberdeen; Professor Marialena Nikolopoulou, University of Kent
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Rapid advances in digital technologies have converged with research in business, social science and humanities to dissolve the boundaries between disciplines, institutions and practices. The Digital Economy Communities and Culture Network+ (CCNetwork+) engages with transformations in these different streams of research, bringing them together with a wider public through direct engagements, innovative methods and digital resources. Advances in digital technologies have also brought about the transformation of cultural institutions such as libraries, museums, schools, media and arts centres, whose interactions with their users, researchers, and information 'itself', is increasingly digital. As a direct consequence, the notion of 'culture' as a static resource or located place is no longer tenable. A third transformation has been in the concept of 'community', as interest groups, social/political capital, and connectivity are mediated, produced and reconfigured in different ways through social and other digital media. These new and converging frontiers of knowledge and communication mark the CCNetwork+ as a timely and crucial intervention into a shifting digital landscape.

For more information on news and events visit the CCNetwork+ website.

Towards a Social Media Science: Tools and Methodologies

Dr David Weir, Dr Jeremy Reffin, Mr Simon Wibberley

The explosion of social media has created an unprecedented research opportunity for social scientists. Social media present a digital tableau of society-in-motion: of people arguing, condemning, joking, influencing. The growth of these digital spaces has coincided with the emergence of a family of tools - ‘big data analytics’ – that can make sense of them. Harnessing social media data as behavioral evidence using these tools could bring about a step-change evolution in the social sciences. However, deriving meaning from these messy, contradictory data sets requires the development of new methodologies across the research cycle. The social sciences are concerned with collecting unbiased, representative samples; of analyzing data in ways that reflect and appreciate social reality; and of constructing more general explanatory theories, all according to an ethical frame that protects subjects of the research. Current methods do little more than offer raw, descriptive enumeration of social media phenomena drawn from samples of convenience, with little additional interpretative enquiry or context. This project is designed to address these problems by creating an overall research system that can garner insight from Twitter that satisfy the standards of evidence demanded by social science. To do this, it proposes to create new methodologies at each point of the research cycle:

• Collection: Samples from Twitter are created by storing tweets that contain words that are searched for. Our sampling method will discover the search terms that are statistically co-incident with on-topic tweets, and filter out tweets that are irrelevant. The system ‘cascades’: a constantly refreshing, statistically grounded, method of sampling that accommodates changes in how topics are discussed.

• Analysis & Interpretation: Automated sentiment analysis classifies tweets at great volumes into categories of meaning. We will create categories that are informed by standing social science theory and the data itself, in order to draw meaningful conclusions and inferences based on the data.

• Ethics: Social media science entails a number of moral hazards that are not answered by conventional ethical frameworks. We will construct a new framework of social media science ethics on the basis of current public attitudes, possible harms to research subjects, and propose ways to measure and minimize them.

This will open up the value of social media to many different actors who have a stake in understanding people and society. Through publishing software and findings, and a series of training workshops aimed at both producers and consumers of research, we aim to spread the practice of rigorous, ethical social media science.

This is a joint research project with colleagues in the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at the Demos Think-tank, and is funded by the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods.