Posted: 4th October 2017

Members of the Department’s Human Centred Computing group (HCC) took part in the Curiosity Carnival on 29 September.

The Curiosity Carnival was Oxford’s contribution to European Researchers’ Night, a celebration of research held in cities across Europe. Oxford ran a city-wide programme of activities across its universities, libraries, gardens and woods to give members of the public a chance to find out about real research projects and meet the people who conduct them.

The HCC team - joined by colleagues from other research groups - ran a stand in the Pitt Rivers Museum that was based on two of their projects: UnBias and Digital Wildfire. Both projects seek to promote fairness and safety on the internet. The team set up displays that gave information about common challenges to online safety and fairness in everyday life such as trolling and hate speech, fake news and bias in search results. Visitors were invited to reflect on the challenges and vote to indicate how they felt they could be best resolved.

They also had the opportunity to discuss their views and learn more about the two projects by talking to members of the HCC team and taking away information leaflets. On a highly successful evening, over 2500 visitors came through the museum and helped the HCC team to find answers to the question: How do you take care on the internet?

Further information: http://unbias.wp.horizon.ac.uk/2017/10/02/unbias-takes-part-in-european-researchers-night/