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| Image courtesy of Barry Bradlyn |
By Lucía Sánchez, EUC Research Assistant and PhD Student in Spanish Literatures and Cultures
On September 21, the TU Vienna Digital Humanism Initiative and the European Union Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted a faculty workshop on Transparent Automated Content Moderation with the collaboration of Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). Professors and researchers from both TU Wien (Peter Knees, Julia Neidhardt, Allan Hanbury and Anna Marakasova) and UIUC (Barry Bradlyn, Eshwar Chandrasekharan, and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe) were in attendance.
While bearing a similarity to Digital Humanities and sharing some of the research approaches to humanities with tools of the digital realm, Digital Humanism is best labelled as a new kind of humanism, as Peter Knees remarked during the workshop. As described on the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism, this interdisciplinary approach “describes, analyzes, and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind, for a better society and life, fully respecting universal human rights”. Digital Humanism encompasses discussions of AI, democracy, ethics, information technology and data systems, as can be seen in TU Vienna Digital Humanism recently published volume Perspectives on Digital Humanism.
Anna Marakasova, a pre-doctoral researcher from TU Wien, presented the Transparent Automated Content Moderation (TACo) project, led by Allan Hanbury. This project focuses on toxic language in social media and is motivated by the problems of online moderation. The novelty of this project is that it has a user-centric, bottom-up approach. The research for the TACo project is developed from a user perspective, with the starting point of the project being the identification of what is considered toxic talk by the citizens of Vienna. Moreover, this project emphasizes not only the definition or detection of negative content, but the importance of respectful content that fosters constructive discussions and a deliberative public sphere.
The UIUC professors participating in this workshop described the similar concerns that guide their own research projects, specifically, the issues regarding the classification of toxic online discussions as well as content moderation. Barry Bradlyn, Assistant Professor of Physics, investigates the flow of cross-platform hate speech and hateful images and memes by mapping out the networks through which they propagate. Eshwar Chandrasekharan, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, is the lead of the Social Computing Laboratory (SCUBA), which aims to make the internet a safer and more welcoming place, with one of his interests being re-aligning systems towards promoting positive behavior. Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor and Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction at the University Library, is the Co-Director of the AI and Society Research Cluster, an interdisciplinary group interested in issues related to ethics, privacy, and the use of AI in media disinformation.
As Jonathan Larson, Associate Director of the EUC, indicated in the opening statements for the workshop, one of the objectives of the EUC is to facilitate connections between UIUC and other academic institutions in Europe. As an example, between 2017 and 2019, the EUC received a grant to collaborate with the Center for European Studies (CES) at KU Leuven on the Conversation on Transatlanticism and Europe (CEURO) project. CEURO featured a joint synchronous, virtual course in which both students and professors on professors on both sides of the Atlantic participated, as well as a Spring School (student exchange) and other activities such as roundtables, workshops, and a blog.
UIUC has a study abroad presence in TU Vienna through the Illinois in Vienna Programs (IiVP) study abroad programs, which include other Austrian universities such as the University of Vienna, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and the Vienna University of Economic and Business. This workshop emerged in part from a recent project of the EUC in conjunction with LAS International Programs to start an online course involving multiple study abroad centers in Europe. This course, EURO 199, was offered in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, and was focused on the concept of smart cities, as well as how this concept is instantiated in Vienna, Paris, Granada, and Rome. Through these existing ties between UIUC and TU Wien, the EUC came to know of the Digital Humanism Initiative.
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