Human-centric Digital Age

Topic description

Scope:

Specific Challenge: Technologies, networks and new digital and social media are changing the way people behave, think, interact and socialize as persons, citizens, workers and consumers. Understanding the nature and consequences of these changes in order to better shape the digital future is a key success factor for the values and competitiveness of the European society. There is a need for exploring the two-way interactions between technology and society in order to lay foundations for future thinking in ICT and for future regulatory and policy-making activities in the DAE areas.

Scope:

a.      The Research & Innovation Actions should aim at in-depth exploration of the development of fundamental notions such as identity, privacy, relationships, culture, reputation, motivations, responsibility, attention, safety and fairness, in the hyper-connected age where the limits between offline and online are blurred in numerous ways. Gender, generational and cultural differences in behaviours should also be considered where relevant.

Examples of relevant research topics include:

         How do humans cope with information overload and attention scarcity? How do ICT environments and processes affect the ways individuals deal with information flows and focus their attention?

         How does the blurring between online and offline world affect the way people experience their different settings (work, leisure, family)? How can smart and connected environments support individuals and society?

         What are the norms and behaviours that should be considered for behaving ethically and being fair to each other in a hyper-connected digital world? How should their adoption in the digital culture be fostered?

b.      The coordination and support activities should facilitate community building between ICT developers, researchers in SSH and other disciplines, and stakeholders for responsible research and innovation. They should provide concrete incentives and motivations for cross-disciplinary collaborations. Coordination actions are invited to coordinate  and support responsible research and innovation through ICT and within ICT R&D&I areas on different parts of the H2020 Work programme, notably by efficient exchange of results between SSH research, on-going R&D&I projects and relevant areas of policy making and regulatory activities.

Expected impact:

a.      The Research & Innovation Actions supported under this objective are expected to:

         provide new knowledge of the ways by which individuals and communities work, think, learn, behave, and interact in the new hyper-connected environments and of how these new developments affect people's perceptions of self, services, entrepreneurship, democracy, and governance.

         provide well-founded transferable results, including innovative concepts and proved functional models, which can be exploited in the future research, policy and regulatory agendas.

b.      The coordination and support activities are expected to

         provide support to the ongoing and future ICT projects by establishing an efficient and effective collaboration ground between ICT developers, researchers in multiple disciplines, and a broad stakeholder base (including society, industry, policy makers).

         provide support for take-up and establish best practices for responsible research and innovation in different areas of ICT Work programme.

All successful projects should establish broad and durable constituencies, which support results take up and further work beyond the lifetime of the project.

Types of action:

a.       Research & Innovation Actions – Proposals requesting a Small contribution are expected

b.      Coordination and Support Actions

Socio-economic science and humanities
Gender