Frances Ryan

Edinburgh Napier University, Centre for Creative and Social Informatics, Faculty Member

University of Dundee, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Post-Doc

Edinburgh Napier University, Centre for Social Informatics, Post-Doc

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Papers by Frances Ryan

From transparency to accountability of intelligent systems: Moving beyond aspirations

Data & Policy, 2022

A number of governmental and nongovernmental organizations have made significant efforts to encou... more A number of governmental and nongovernmental organizations have made significant efforts to encourage the development of artificial intelligence in line with a series of aspirational concepts such as transparency, interpretability, explainability, and accountability. The difficulty at present, however, is that these concepts exist at a fairly abstract level, whereas in order for them to have the tangible effects desired they need to become more concrete and specific. This article undertakes precisely this process of concretisation, mapping how the different concepts interrelate and what in particular they each require in order to move from being high-level aspirations to detailed and enforceable requirements. We argue that the key concept in this process is accountability, since unless an entity can be held accountable for compliance with the other concepts, and indeed more generally, those concepts cannot do the work required of them. There is a variety of taxonomies of accountabil...

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Assisting information practice: from information intermediary to digital proxy

Proceedings of ISIC: the information behaviour conference Pretoria, South Africa, 28th September to 1st October, 2020, 2020

Introduction. Dependence on social media and other online systems as part of everyday life has gr... more Introduction. Dependence on social media and other online systems as part of everyday life has grown considerably over the years. At the same time, the complexity and security of online systems has been increasing, making it more challenging for some people to access the services they need. This impacts the information practices of many users, leading to several scenarios where individuals need assistance in information related tasks, from registering for government services to updating social media content. This poster presents a summary of findings from two qualitative studies and serves as the initial foundation for a larger investigation related to digital proxies. Method. Different methods of investigation were used for each of the two studies. Study One used a combination of interviews and focus groups to determine how social media accounts are managed by and for older adults through the use of digital proxies. Study Two considered a series of scenarios in a workshop with info...

Building identity in online environments: An information science perspective

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2017

The research presented in this poster is concerned with the ways in which people use information ... more The research presented in this poster is concerned with the ways in which people use information to build identities for themselves online with reference to the themes of personal reputation management. To date these two themes have been under-explored together in the research literature, both in general, and from an Information Science perspective. The poster content shares findings related to three areas of identity building: (1) the creation and use of online personas and identities; (2) the use of anonymity and pseudonyms through information sharingor concealment practices; and (3) the ways in which the blurring or merging together of participants' private and professional selves. This study used participant diaries and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 45 UK-based participants. The main finding presented here is that individuals present elements of their online persona or personality using online information, but that they do not do so with the intention of building identity. The findings explored in this presentation are contextualised with reference to identity building in the more formal setting of academic reputation management, i.e. through the use of citations.

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Build, manage and evaluate: information practices and personal reputations on social media platforms

Introduction. The broad theme of this paper is the use of information to build, manage and evalua... more Introduction. The broad theme of this paper is the use of information to build, manage and evaluate personal reputations. It reports the findings of a study that considered the extent to which social media users replicate in online environments the established information practices of academics when they assess their peers. The three platforms considered are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Method. A multi-step data collection process was implemented for this work. Forty-five UK-based social media users kept journals and took part in semi-structured interviews. Analysis. A qualitative analysis of the journal and diary data was undertaken using NVivo10. Information practices were analysed to considered the similarities or difference between social media practices and related practices deployed by academics related to citations. Results. The findings expose the ways in which social media users build, manage, and evaluate personal reputations online may be aligned to the citation pract...

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