RightsCon Tunis 2019

How I Played The Game And Became An Activist (Technologies for Social Good. Teplitsa)

Speakers: Maria Borisyonok

The presentation will be about the mechanics of the online platform "Teploset" - https://teplo.social/ . It is the educational platform for small and medium cities of Russia. More than 1500 participants are registered during the last year, and the majority of users are representing real initiatives. The main question of the platform "How can we create a connection between people who're thousands of miles away and solve the same problem?". Participants can learn our concept of gamification and content/communication strategy that we use.

Simulating Digital Risk: A Hands-On, Creative Method for Raising Awareness and Generating Buy-In (National Democratic Institute)

Speakers: Sarah Moulton  

Over the past year, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) has been collaborating with the Harvard University Belfer Center’s Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) to internationalize its Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook and its supplementary materials, including a customized, hands-on simulation methodology called a Tabletop Exercise (TTX). Initially developed by D3P for state and local election officials, NDI has adapted the TTX methodology to help at-risk political groups and civil society organizations assess their own readiness to address information security threats and simulate the potential consequences of unmitigated risks. This demo will provide a brief overview of the TTX methodology, describe the various elements of game play, share lessons learned from pilot implementations, and discuss ideas for how such simulations can help to overcome the frequent and persistent challenges of generating effective buy-in from key organizational actors and leadership.

UnBias Fairness Toolkit – Educational algorithm awareness raising and civic thinking (University of Nottingham)

Speakers: Ansgar Koene and Yohko Hatada

As part of the increasingly personalised service offering of online platforms, algorithmic systems such as personalised product recommendations, news feeds and search results have come to dominate the online experiences of many users. Despite the ubiquity of their application however, awareness about algorithmic systems remains very low, and often confused. The EPSRC funded UnBias project has spent the last two years engaging with young people (13-17 years old) and industry, civil-society and academic stakeholders to better understand the needs and concerns regarding awareness of algorithmic systems and their characteristics. Based on the outcomes of this work UnBias produce a set of “Awareness Cards” that are part of an algorithmic “Fairness Toolkit” for online platforms. This workshop will be in interactive session aimed at exploring awareness building around the use of algorithms in online platforms, through the use of the UnBias Awareness Cards. We will introduce the awareness cards and invite everyone to take part in activities designed to encourage critical and civic thinking for exploring how decisions are made by algorithms, and the impact that these decisions may have on our lives and the lives of others. The "Fairness Toolkit" is freely available (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license) at: https://unbias.wp.horizon.ac.uk/fairness-toolkit/