HumanIT Annual Report 2012
the HumanIT working year starts March 1st and ends the last date of February
HumanIT is a multi-disciplinary research center at KAU (Karlstad University), from 1st of January 2013 under the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (previously under the Faculty of Economy, Communication and IT). The research center aims at reinforcing research on ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) from a user perspective through collaboration between different researchers, but also in close cooperation with the industry and with the public sector. During the working year HumanIT adopted a general portal paragraph:
In close cooperation with the trade, industry and public sector, HumanIT is a multidisciplinary research center underlining user and human perspectives on information and communication technologies (ICTs).
HumanIT seeks to enhance the appreciation and usability of ICTs in people’s everyday life without compromising human rights such as privacy. Based on a human perspective, HumanIT focuses on ICT uses for improved livelihood. Further attention is drawn to developing regions as well as the role and potential uses of ICTs in crisis and emergency situations.
Our objectives:
- Underline and strengthen research focusing on human perspectives of ICTs.
- Establish Karlstad University as a leading institution for research on human perspectives of ICTs.
- Provide a multi-disciplinary platform for research and collaboration across disciplines with trade, industry and public sector.
- Contribute to the trade, industry and public sector by influencing product and service development.
Profile Areas
HumanIT focuses on three profile areas concerning research on ICTs from a user perspective;
1)ICT for Development (ICT4D)
2)Surveillance and Privacy in Information Society
3)ICT for Disaster Management and Crisis Communication
Profile Area 1 – ICT4D
ICT4D Coordinator for profile area 1 is Caroline Wamala, postdoc researcher at Gender Studies. During the year a profile paragraph was proposed by Caroline Wamala and adopted by the board:
Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been identified as strengthening and/or contributing to sustainable development. Much of the theoretical and scientific development of this field is indebted to analyses of the practical applications of ICT in development plans, actions and their impact on the local contexts. ICT-for-Development (ICT4D) is one of the core research areas at the center for HumanIT at Karlstad University. In an effort to diversify the field, HumanIT has been at the forefront in recognizing mobile communications for development (M4D) as a critical area of research within ICT4D owing to the growing popularity of mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. The sheer volume of publications and on-going research on M4D, as well as the biennial international conferences organized on the same topic by HumanIT, have propelled the center towards curving a specific research niche in ICT4D
PhD Research
During the year HumanIT has continued to directly finance two PhD students, one within profile area 1 and one within profile area 2. Many other PhD students are working with HumanIT related areas. By involving these in HumanIT seminars, HumanIT ties the research to the graduate program.
In profile area 1 - Ilkin Mehrabovhas completed four doctoral courses, taught at both undergraduate and master levels at Karlstad University. He has presented at conferences and seminars in Karlstad, Uppsala, Örebro, Roskilde, Paris, Istanbul and Moscow. Ilkin Mehrabov is doing his PhD in Media and Communication Studies.
Florencia Enghel, PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies, is researching the relationship between citizenship, communication and social change (with an eye to the role played by ICTs when combined with other types of media). In 2012 she started her fieldwork with financial support from the Helge Ax:Son Johnsons Stiftelse and was an Erasmus Visiting Lecturer at the University of Cádiz in Spain. Moreover, she attended the 11thCongress of the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC), held in Montevideo, Uruguay, where she presented a paper and participated in a guest panel (representing Nordicom) and in an expert debate on communication, development and public policy. She continued to act as Vice-Chair of the Participatory Communication Research Section of IAMCR (the International Association for Media and Communication Research) and co-edited a special issue of Nordicom Review together with Professor Karin Wilkins from UT Austin (see publication lists last in this report).
Paola Sartoretto, PhD student in Media and Communication whose dissertation project explores communicative processes and media practices in the rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil. In 2012 she completed doctoral courses to a total of 69 ECTS and presented her dissertation proposal at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at Bremen University in Germany, participated in the ECREA conference in Istanbul, Turkey and given lectures in the Master Programme in Communication at Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil. Paola has been awarded a grant of 30,000 SEK from Stiftelsen Lars Hierta Minne for her fieldwork in Brazil in 2013.
Research Projects and Funding Applications[1]
Blended Learning
Ulf Buskqvist and Ann-Britt Enochsson are working with the teacher training program and from autumn 2012 it is possible to study the subject teacher training (ämneslärarutbildningen at Karlstad University from other places with the help of digital communication tools. This initiative – to follow the teacher training program online without any connection to the learning center – is unique in Sweden. The initiative has been launched with the concepts of “online education” and “blended learning”. Digital competence of teachers as well as students is a prerequisite for such online education. The purpose of the research project is to investigate the conditions and forms of learning with the help of ICTs.
Digitalization and Rationalities of Political Participation
During the year Jakob Svensson finalized publications for the research projects on Digitalization and Rationalities of Political Participation. The project has been supported by Karlstad University and HumanIT in the form of extended research time. During the year Jakob Svensson has presented at E-government and E-democracy conferences in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain as well as at the ICT 4 Society conference in Uppsala and the European Communication Research conference in Istanbul. The project was allocated 100000 SEK from the Nils-Eric Svensson fund for young researchers at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) to spend three months during 2012 at the Centre for E-democracy at Donau University Krems, Austria to study motivations to political participation in a digital media and communication landscape.
Internet in the Classroom
Dan Åkerlund at Media and Communication Studies (KAU) doing his PhD at Åbo University (Finland), studies school classes in Karlstad were blogs are used as educational tools. He is also working in a project connecting school classes in Karlstad with classes in Bagamoyo (Tanzania) via Skype. Once every fortnight the classes are connected and interview and present work for each other. Dan Åkerlund will present his results in his dissertation, scheduled to be defended during 2013.
mEmpowerment
This research project revolves around the notion of mEmpowerment; analyzing to what extent mobile communication contributes to the empowerment of women and girls. Mobile communication has grown at an exponential rate in developing countries, clearly emerging as the more accessible and popular device within the field of ICT4D. Access to mobile devices is an important obstacle and the persistence of unequal gender structures calls for continued efforts in addressing these gaps. This research project aims at highlighting the ways in which mobile communication can be used to empower women and girls in developing countries and how a critical understanding of the notion mEmpowerment can be used to evaluate and further mobile communication from a gender perspective. During 2012 HumanIT together with Center for Gender studies submitted an application to SIDA for funding.
Conferences
During the working year 2012 HumanIT has worked to prepare for the 4th International Conference on Mobile Communication for Development (M4D2014). The conference will take place the 8th - 9th of April 2014 in Dakar, Senegal. Université Cheick Anta Diop de Dakar will be the main organizer with HumanIT acting as a co-organizer. See the conference webpage for more information.
During the working year HumanIT Director and ICT4D Coordinator presented a paper on M4D to the SANORD (Southern Africa-Nordic Centre) conference in June in Aarhus, Denmark. The participation was sponsored by the Faculty's internationalization fund. The Director and ICT4D Coordinator have also been selected to present on the M4D conferences at the ConferenceMobile Telephony in the Developing World, University of Jyväskylä, Finland May 2013.
HumanIT Director was invited to act as Vice Program Directorforthe track The mobile web for social and economic development during the 9th International conference on Mobile Web Systems (MobiWIS-2012), Niagara Falls, Canada, August, 2012.
Summer School
HumanIT is working together with SERD (Society for Education and Research Development) India, to prepare for a summer school in ICT for Democracy, planned for spring 2014 in New Dehli, India. An application for funding has been submitted to STINT.
Co-organized Workshops in India
During the working year, HumanIT co-organized two workshops in India, One workshop – ICTS in the new millennium – took place in Yamuna Nager, India, March 2012. HumanIT Director delivered a talk on Mobile Communication for Development.
MFS Scholarships
During 2012 HumanIT granted three master students (David Cheruiyot, Raul Ferrer & Kelsey Williams) MFS (Minor Field Studies) grants for Master students doing Mater thesis research in the field of ICT4D. HumanIT had applied and been granted 100000 SEK from SPIDER (the Swedish Program for ICT4D in Developing Regions) for these grants.
David Cheruiyot, from Media and Communication Studies went to Kenya to study mobile media and participatory development. Raul Ferrer, from Information Systems went to Ghana to study Mobile Accessibility in Crisis Management Environments. Kelsey Williams, form Media and Communcation Studies went to Lebanon to study the intersections between popular communication (HipHop), political participation (Arab Spring) and the Internet. A HumanIT seminar to discuss their findings is scheduled for 2013.
Cooperation
Austria
Jakob Svensson is co-operating with Alexander Banfield Mumb at the UTI research group Vienna to draft research the role of social media platforms to study agenda-setting and framing. Also, by spending three months in Austria during 2012 Jakob Svensson co-operated with Danube University in Krems. Among other things a co-authored article has been produced and sent for review.
Gender Studies
HumanIT is in co-operation with Gender Studies at KAU with the ICT4D coordinator Caroline Wamala, also doing a postdoc in Gender Studies. A joint seminar in co-operation with Compare on ICTs and Gender took place during the year (see section on Seminars).
Indian Co-operation
The co-organized workshops organized in India has tied HumanIT to Indian partners, especially SERD, but also Mukand Lal National College (MLN) in Yamuna Nager..
SANORD
SANORD is a collaboration of Southern African and Nordic academic institutions, committed to advancing strategic, multilateral academic collaboration as they seek to address new local and global challenges of innovation and development. In 2014 KAU will host the SANORD symposium and during the working year HumanIT presented work on M4D at their symposium in Aarhus, Denmark.
SPIDER
HumanIT and SPIDER (Swedish Program for ICTs in Developing Regions) co-operates in many different ways. Karlstad University, through HumanIT,is an official partner to SPIDER with the HumanIT Director as the contact person. SPIDER allocated money 2012 for Master students MFS grants (se previous section). Jakob Svensson has also been invited to the SPIDER seminar series as a discussant. March 2013 Jakob Svensson is also invited to present on HumanIT research on M4D. HumanIT hosted and official visit of SPIDER to Karlstad to invent research at KAU on ICT4D but also discuss future possibilities for co-operation.
Summer School in ICT for Democracy
Applying for funding to this summer school, HumanIT and SERD are the main collaborators, but HumanIT has also involved Ulrike Klinger from University of Zürich, Uta Russmann from the FHWien University of Applied Sciences, Judith Schossböck and Peter Parycek from Danube University Krems (Austria).
Tanzania Co-operation
Dan Åkerlund co-operates with Faculty of education at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and has been allocated internationalization funds for his research on Internet in the class room. In focus for this co-operation is a project connecting schools in Bagamoyo to schools in Karlstad via Skype. Dan Åkerlund visited Bagamoyo in March 2012.
Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar
For the upcoming conference on M4D that will take place in April 2014, HumanIT cooperates with Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (see previous section)
Profile Area 2 – Surveillance and Privacy in Information Societies
PhD Research
During the year HumanIT has continued to directly finance two PhD students, one within profile area 1 and one within profile area 2. Many other PhD students are working with HumanIT related areas. By involving these in HumanIT seminars (see the next section) HumanIT ties the research to the graduate program.
In profile are 2 - Frank van GeelkerkenPhD student in research profile area 2 - has completed one doctoral course. He has spent the year to gather relevant materials such as statutes, research documents et cetera as well as working with the introductory and background chapters of his thesis. He has been teaching at both Karlstad University and Stockholm University as well as prepared for a course to be given in Estonia. He has presented at conferences and seminars in Stockholm and Karlstad as well as presented his research topic at several law firms in Cape Town. Frank van Geelkerken is doing his PhD in Law
Julio Angulo, PhD student in Interaction Design is not directly funded by HumanIT but doing his research for the HumanIT related PET project (Privacy Enhancing Technologies – see Google Research Award below). During 2012 Julio completed five additional courses at the doctoral level and was involved in the planning, lecturing and supervision of courses and theses at Karlstad University. He concluded his work of two projects that ended during the course of the year and started two additional international projects with important external partners from both, academia and the industry, such as Google, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, and others. The work that he carried out within the projects resulted in six academic publications in the area of usable privacy and security, in particular on the usability aspects of privacy policies, anonymity technology, and the use of securing mobile devices through touch-screen biometrics (see last in this report). During this year he also successfully defended his licentiate thesis, entitled “Usable privacy for digital transactions: Exploring the usability aspects of three privacy enhancing mechanisms”.
Research Projects and Funding Applications[2]
A4Cloud
The project "Accountability for Cloud and other Future Internet Services" (A4Cloud) is an Integrating Project in the EU 7th Framework Program, with a goal to develop mechanisms and tools to enable cloud service providers to give their users appropriate control and transparency over how their data is used.Funding was applied for from, and granted by, the EU 7th Framework Program.A4Cloud is led by HP Labs and a number of European research organizations and industry and university partners. The project started in October and Karlstad university got about 7 Million SEK for 3,5 years. February 27th 2013 s workshop was held in Karlstad on with participants from Datainspektionen, Swedish Consumer Agency, Konsument Europa – Consumer Sweden, Karlstad Town Council IT Department, County Council IT Department, Computer Center of Karlstad University, and from Tieto AB and Veriscan.
DSID
In 2011, Ge Zhang and Simone Fischer- Hübner recieved a grant from Internetfonden (.SE) for at about 270.000 SEK for the Project on “Denial of Service on SIP Infrastructures using DNS (DSID)”. The Project was finalized during 2012.
Google Research Awards – Usable Privacy and Transparency I & II
Usable Privacy and Transparency Tools. In 2011 Google granted a one year award for furthering research on usable privacy,specifically how to protect the web user's privacy by letting the user have different identities when using services on the Internet. The Google-supported study at Karlstad University builds on other projects on internet privacy which Karlstad University has been involved in (such as PET). The project was finalized March 2012. Usable Privacy and Transparency II. This Google research grant started in September 2012 and will run for one year. The project was awarded 500.000 SEK for continuing work with the project.
LiSS
The Living in Surveillance Societies (LiSS) COST Action is a European research program designed to increase and deepen knowledge about living and working in the surveillance age, in order to better understand the consequences and impacts of enhanced surveillance, and subsequently to make recommendations about its future governance and practice. Karlstad University researchers (André Jansson & Miyase Christensen) participate as experts in working group. For more info see
Petweb II:
Privacy respecting Identity Management for e-Norge – PetwebII. Simone Fischer Hübner cooperates with Gjövik Univeristy College, Norwegian Computer Center, Oslo University, Borking Consulting (Netherlands).
Secure Spaces: Media, Consumption and Social Surveillance
This project was finalised during the working year with book chapter publications, articles and conference papers. A book contract has been signed with Peter Lang for an anthology Media, Surveillance and Identity: A Social Perspective, which is planned to be, published 2013.
Smart Society
Smart Society is a EU FP7 project aiming at a hybrid system where people and machines tightly work together to build a smarter society - see The project started in January 2013 and KAU has been allocated about 4 Million Euros for 4 years from the EU 7th Framework program”. Computer Science at KAU will be in charge of the Privacy by Design of Smart Society systems.
SWITS
SWITS - Swedish IT Security Network for PhD students, is coordinated by KAU. MSB granted the network 1 Million SEK for 5 years.
Towards blocking-resistant communication on the Internet
Internetfonden fund the project “Towards blocking-resistant communication on the Internet”: see
U-PRIM
U-Prim (Usable Privacy-enhancing Identity Management for smart applications) is a research project involving the departments of Computer Science, Information Systems and Psychology at KAU in collaboration with industry partners Nordea Bank in Denmark and Gemalto in Sweden. The purpose of the project is to find ways of using future mobile technologies that are secure, privacy-friendly and easy to use. During 2012 the U-PrIM project was finalized, a report was produced and HumanIT co-organized a final seminar.