This Center for Digital Society and Data Studies supports a wide variety of research and hosts scholars that care most about addressing big challenges related to today's Internet of Things (IoT), disinformation in the news, privacy concerns in a big-data era, democratization of artificial intelligence, bias or discrimination in machine learning, information access in under-connected communities or societies, digitizing data for broadened use and protection, and more!
Please see our research page for current scholarly foci, and if you would like to discuss CDSDS or its activities, please contact the Director, Bryan Heidorn, at heidorn@email.arizona.edu.
Mission
The Center’s mission is to maximize the positive outcomes afforded by emerging analytical tools and information technologies, while minimizing the risks presented by these new opportunities. The development of actionable plans and new understandings of underlying psychological, social, and technical processes will lead to changing policies tied to technological innovations, and will lead to improved tools over time.
The Center does this by supporting interdisciplinary research, community involvement, community projects, and research grants relative to contemporary issues in information, culture, data, technological innovation, and environmental change – problem areas in digital life that are in no way bounded within a single unit, discipline, or College at the University of Arizona.
Objectives
The Center’s objectives include:
- providing useful insight and research findings that are relevant for both academics and non-scholars working on applied problems in non-academic settings,
- developing cutting-edge research-based in core questions about contemporary digital life, data management, and computational analytics, and
- bringing together academics, public intellectuals, and community partners to engage in conversation and debate about where our collective research and policy should go as it relates to the rapidly changing digital world.