Photo Label: Front Row, left to right: Prof. Gina Netto, Dr. Sara Bailey, Dr. Laura Whyte, & Prof. Lynne Baillie

Back Row, left to right: Dr. Deborah Menezes, Eunice Anteh, Dr. Mehdi Rizvi, Dr. Mennan Guder, Dr. Yingfang Yuan, & Kefan Chen.

Photo Credit: Andy Edmondson

PRIME Multi-disciplinary Presentations at REPHRAIN’s ‘All Hands Meeting’ in Edinburgh

Dr. Sara Bailey | 18 July 2024

Now that the hard work of data collection and data analysis is drawing to a close, the project team was delighted to have the opportunity to bring together researchers from both the social and computer sciences to provide a cross-disciplinary overview of our key findings to partners and stakeholders at the May 2024 ‘All Hands Meeting’ which was convened by REPHRAIN.  

Of course, with 10 months remaining on the project, a good deal of work still remains to be done, especially for the team members involved in developing privacy-enhancing technologies and explainable AI that will help mitigate the online harms faced by minoritised ethnic (ME) communities when accessing online services, but this was a valuable opportunity to reflect on the progress made across the project so far.  

The team presented evidence, from interviews and a survey with ME participants, regarding how the digitalisation of essential services is undermining minoritised ethnic communities’ access to social citizenship rights, in particular the social rights to housing and primary healthcare. They also gave an overview as to how the Choice-Based Letting system is shaping ME communities’ access to social housing, with potential discriminatory effects.  

Further work, on how a machine learning technique known as Latent Class Analysis (LCA), can be used to create “personas” based on data collected from the PRIME survey, was also shared. These personas, of minority ethnic people, can be used to better understand what interventions in online health, energy and housing services, could positively improve ME communities' experiences of these services. 

Finally, project PI, Prof. Gina Netto closed the session by presenting on the PRIME project’s co-design workshops on behalf of on behalf of Dr Aunam Quonam and Dr. Mark Wong who were unable to attend in person. The workshops facilitated a space where members of ME communities and stakeholders from across different sectors reflected on their experiences of digital services, and worked together to co-create key principles and solutions to inform the design of digital services and how data and AI systems are used.  

More information about co-designing solutions to online harms are available here: Valuing lived experience and co-design solutions to counter racial inequality in data and algorithmic systems in UK’s digital services.   

For further information about the PRIME project, please contact us.