Professor Ben Light recently spoke at a seminar for the ESRC Leadership Network programme. Hosted by the University of Salford, this special 2-hour online session explored strategies for creating inclusive research projects and included Professor Bhuvana Bibleraaj, Professor in Nursing/Surgical Practice, Professor Michelle Cornes, Professor of Health and Social Policy Inequalities and Professor Vanessa Heaslip, Professor of Nursing and Healthcare Equity.
- Ben talked about the variable pervasiveness of digital media around the world and the challenges and opportunities this can present to researchers in the social sciences, irrespective of their research focus. He suggested this is made more complex when we attend to intersectionality and EDI. Going beyond protected characteristics, I will enfolded ideas such as social class, economics and relationship status. The challenges and opportunities he discussed related to digital media as variously experienced in everyday life, and where this exists in our methods.
- Challenges and opportunities referred to included:
- digital exclusion/discrimination,
- digital literacy,
- automation – bots and AI,
- the deployment of deliberate and/or unfair bias and censorship,
- sourcing participants (post-demographics, singular difference communities),
- sourcing and collecting data (the commercial web, technical skills, data quality, data quantity),
- digital methods,
- research ethics in a digital context.