Helen Kennedy
Helen Kennedy
Title: “What Does a Good Digital Society Look Like? “
Abstract: Digital communication technologies are not always good for societies, and even the most well-intentioned technologies can end up doing harm. It is in this context that Ruha Benjamin argues that we must ‘Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within’. In other words, not losing sight of everything we know about digital harms and inequities, we should use our imaginations to challenge how things are and identify how we want them to be. Benjamin cites Toni Morrison’s encouragement that we ‘Dream a little before [we] think’ (Benjamin, 2024). To this end, in this presentation, I consider what a good digital society looks like and how we get there.
I will confront the complexity of that simple, four-letter word, good, considering who gets to decide whether, how and for whom digital society is good, and how perspectives on a good digital society differ globally. I acknowledge the scale of the challenge of thinking with and through the notion of a good digital society, given the broad range of technologies and innovations that make up our digital communication landscape and the extensive domains across which such technologies are deployed. This means that a good digital society is not simple to define or achieve. Nonetheless, I argue that thinking about what a good digital society looks like is essential. We need to address this normative challenge head on, hash out differences, disagree with each other, face impasses, and recognise that we may never arrive at a single, settled definition of a good digital society. I consider whether general principles for a good digital society can be abstracted from context-specific requirements relating to particular tech deployments in different geographical locations. In short, to imagine and craft the digital society we cannot live without, I will reflect on what kind of digital society we want to live with and in.
Bio: Professor Helen Kennedy is interested in how AI, automation and datafication are experienced by non-expert folk as part of their everyday lives, and strategies for living with data. This means thinking about how data, AI and automation come into being, the contexts in which they are made and shaped, inequalities and how and whether they can be equitable and just, how they should be governed, what good digital societies look like and why the concept of ‘the digital good’ is so contested. She is also interested in data visualizaton in society, social media, platform politics and algorithmic culture. She has secured around £9m / €10.5m in research funding, including for the current ESRC Digital Good Network, the Public Voices in AI project and the Living With Data program of research. Most of her research involves collaborating with non-academic stakeholders to seek to enact change (e.g. government departments, media organisations).
Professor of Sociological Studies, Digital Society University of Sheffield
