Value sensitive design (VSD) is a well-established approach used to integrate considerations of ethical, moral, and other values into the development of digital technologies and information systems. It is based on the plausible assumption that an early awareness of values can help shape the development and design of technologies in ways that will be conducive to the realisation of such values in the use of the technology in question. This article reflects on the current state of VSD and highlights the view of digital technologies as integral parts of broader digital ecosystems. It suggests that a more comprehensive integration of this ecosystem perspective can strengthen VSD. It proposes a framework for the integration of the ecosystems perspective that is based on critical systems heuristics. This framework can help the design of technologies within digital ecosystems, offering a crucial contribution to overcome a potential blind spot of current VSD approaches.

Following years of intensive international debate of the ethical and human rights implications of artificial intelligence (AI)-related technologies, there are numerous proposals to legislate and regulate these technologies. One aspect of possible legislative frameworks for AI is the creation of a new regulator or other body with the remit to provide oversight of AI. This article reviews the ethical and human rights challenges as well as proposed mitigation strategies, in order to the discuss how a regulatory body might be designed to address these challenges. It focuses on a particular form that a new body might take, more specifically on a potential European Agency for AI. Based on a multi-step methodology of stakeholder interaction, the article proposes a terms of reference for such an Agency and discusses the characteristics it would need to display to ensure that it could adequately engage with current and future ethical and human rights challenges arising from the development, deployment and use of AI. This proposal is then contrasted with the proposed European Artificial Intelligence Board included in the draft European Regulation on AI (the AI Act).

Many individuals go to online health communities to obtain emotional and information support. This study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the discourse in five online childhood immunization forums to identify online practices related to engagement and emancipation. We identify four online engagement discourse types in online health communities: cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and political. Consistent with our critical perspective, we identify drivers and obstacles to emancipation. The obstacles to emancipation include the adverse consequences of building online knowledge and collective intelligence, shifts in patient–physician relationships, and “Big” institutional power. Members’ suggestions for empowering community members include encouraging members to conduct their own research on childhood immunization and to differentiate between facts and opinions. These findings suggest that sensemaking is one way to emancipate online health community members, while highlighting the challenges of using online communities to promote emancipation.

All research is philosophy in action. A lack of attention to and understanding of philosophy can render research and its outcomes misleading or vacuous. Understanding philosophical questions, on th...

Objective: We describe current practices of ethics-related data governance in large neuro-ICT projects, identify gaps in current practice, and put forward recommendations on how to collaborate ethically in complex regulatory and normative contexts. Methods: We undertake a survey of published principles of data governance of large neuro-ICT projects. This grounds an approach to a normative analysis of current data governance approaches. Results: Several ethical issues are well covered in the data governance policies of neuro-ICT projects, notably data protection and attribution of work. Projects use a set of similar policies to ensure users behave appropriately. However, many ethical issues are not covered at all. Implementation and enforcement of policies remain vague. Conclusions: The data governance policies we investigated indicate that the neuro-ICT research community is currently close-knit and that shared assumptions are reflected in infrastructural aspects. This explains why many ethical issues are not explicitly included in data governance policies at present. With neuro-ICT research growing in scale, scope, and international involvement, these shared assumptions should be made explicit and reflected in data governance.

Social media platforms provide an increasingly popular means for individuals to share content online. Whilst this produces undoubted societal benefits, the ability for content to be spontaneously posted and reposted creates an ideal environment for rumour and false/malicious information to spread rapidly. When this occurs it can cause significant harm and can be characterised as a “digital wildfire.” In this article, we demonstrate that the propagation and regulation of digital wildfires form important topics for research and conduct an overview of existing work in this area. We outline the relevance of a range of work from the computational and social sciences, including a series of insights into the propagation of rumour and false/malicious information. We argue that significant research gaps remain—for instance, there is an absence of systematic studies on the effects of digital wildfires and there is a need to combine empirical research with a consideration of how the responsible governance of social media can be determined. We propose an agenda for research that establishes a methodology to explore in full the propagation and regulation of unverified content on social media. This agenda promotes high-quality interdisciplinary research that will also inform policy debates.

We explore the ethical implications of HCI's turn to the ‘cultural’. This is motivated by an awareness of how cultural applications, in our case interactive performances, raise ethical issues that may challenge established research ethics processes. We review research ethics, HCI's engagement with ethics and the ethics of theatrical performance. Following an approach grounded in Responsible Research Innovation, we present the findings from a workshop in which artists, curators, commissioners, and researchers explored ethical challenges revealed by four case studies. We identify six ethical challenges for HCI's engagement with cultural applications: transgression, boundaries, consent, withdrawal, data, and integrity. We discuss two broader implications of these: managing tensions between multiple overlapping ethical frames; and the importance of managing ethical challenges during and after an experience as well as beforehand. Finally, we discuss how our findings extend previous discussions of Value Sensitive Design in HCI.

In 1995, Geoff Walsham wrote one of the most important and most widely cited papers on interpretivism in information systems (IS). Walsham's paper, along with his further work, represents a cornerstone of the discourse surrounding interpretive research. It has set the tone for further publications in the area and has more recently been followed up by a detailed practical account of how to undertake interpretive research by the same author. Using Walsham's position as a starting point, the present paper questions some basic assumptions of interpretivism. Drawing on the philosophical background of interpretivism in hermeneutics and phenomenology, the paper questions the status of empirical research in the interpretivist tradition. Using quality criteria of different research streams related to interpretivism, the paper compares the role of empirical data in different types of research accounts with fairy tales, noting that interpretive IS research shares at least as many quality features with fairy tales as with positivist narratives. The paper concludes by discussing which consequences this position has for interpretive and other research in IS.

The discourse concerning computer ethics qualifies as a reference discourse for ethics-related IS research. Theories, topics and approaches of computer ethics are reflected in IS. The paper argues that there is currently a broader development in the area of research governance, which is referred to as ‘responsible research and innovation’ (RRI). RRI applied to information and communication technology (ICT) addresses some of the limitations of computer ethics and points toward a broader approach to the governance of science, technology and innovation. Taking this development into account will help IS increase its relevance and make optimal use of its established strengths.

The potential social consequences that may arise as a result of the development and widespread use of ICT are of increasing interest to the general public, policymakers and researchers. Prominent examples include transformations of our concept of privacy when using social networking and other websites, ownership and control of personal data, and the ways crowd-sourced information transform how events are coordinated and how they unfold in real-time. Although there is broad acceptance that questions of professional responsibility are relevant to ICT it is often unclear how this could be achieved or how responsibilities should be defined and managed when considering the potential social consequences of ICT. `Responsible Research and Innovation' (RRI) has emerged in Europe proposing approaches for researchers to identify and consider the potential social consequences and impact of their research outputs within the entire research and innovation lifecycle. First, it asks researchers to take on a practice of critical reflection considering the potential societal impacts of their research outputs, and second to include the general public in a dialogue around the development of research goals and strategy. We discuss findings from interviews conducted with a broad range of stakeholders regarding challenges to identifying, debating and resolving social and ethical concerns associated with ICT research and practice. We also consider how we might extend existing or develop new approaches that facilitate both critical reflection and wider participation within the entire research and innovation lifecycle.

The field of information systems (IS) is characterised by a plurality of positions and approaches that defy simple definitions or characterisations. One aspect that I believe many, if not most, IS ...

In this issue, EJIS is publishing ‘Memorandum on Design Oriented Information Systems Research’, an opinion that has engendered much debate in the German-speaking Information Systems (IS) community....

Critical social research in information systems has been gaining prominence for some time and is increasingly viewed as a valid research approach. One problem with the critical tradition is a lack of empirical research. A contributing factor to this gap in the literature is the lack of agreement on what constitutes appropriate methodologies for critical research. The present paper contributes to this debate by exploring the role that focus group research can play in the critical approach. This paper outlines the main characteristics of critical research with an emphasis on its emancipatory faculties. It then reviews the focus group method from the perspective of critical approach and provides a critical account of two research projects that used focus groups as a method of data collection. The paper presents the argument that focus groups, if designed and executed in light of a critical approach, can contribute to the emancipation of researchers and respondents. This argument is built upon the critical theories of the two most influential theorists in critical social information systems research, namely Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault. Critically oriented focus groups have the potential to improve communication and move real discourses closer to Habermas's ideal speech situation. At the same time, they can contribute to challenging the prevailing orthodoxy and thereby overcome established regimes of truth in the Foucauldian tradition. The paper ends by developing a set of guiding questions that provide a means for researchers to ensure that the emancipatory potential of focus group research can be achieved.

Cloud computing can raise ethical issues. In many cases these will depend on particular applications and circumstances. The present paper sets out to identify ethical issues of cloud computing that arise from the fundamental nature of the technology rather than any specific circumstances. The paper describes how these general features were identified, how ethical issues arising from them were collected and it concludes by discussing means of addressing them.

Computational Intelligence (CI) techniques have been widely used in the domains of computer security and computer forensics. One problem that normative discussions of technologies face is that the technical capabilities under investigation tend to be unclear and that the experts in normative questions don't tend to be experts in technical developments and vice versa. The present paper therefore sets out to chart the ethical and legal problems arising from a new and fast moving field, namely that of computational intelligence and its application to computer security and forensics. Using artificial neural networks as an example of computational intelligence, the paper's main aim is to create a link between what can now be perceived as technical developments and established discourses in ethics and the law. It aims to chart the territory to highlight likely problems and point in the direction of future research.

This paper discusses Claudio Ciborra's critique of traditional economic rationality. It recounts his account of the Mann Gulch Disaster. The important aspect of his reading of the disaster is that apparently irrational actions may provide appropriate solutions for complex problems. He bases this observation on a phenomenology-inspired understanding of the world which emphasises Dasein's characteristic as being-in-the-world. The paper interprets this as an important contribution to the critique of rationality as put forward by critical research in information systems. However, this phenomenological approach also raises new issues due to its difficulty of dealing with intersubjective understanding and problems of self-application. The paper concludes by suggesting that such difficulties can be overcome by appropriating Ciborra's idea of bricolage and that this special issue may be read as an expression of such collective bricolage.