Track 4

Serving as an inspiration for nations across the globe since 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) provides a set of common principles essential for securing human dignity, equality, and peace for all people. These fundamental rights and freedoms range from the right to life, work, education, medical care, and many others (UDHR, online source). To a great extent, these principles are also reflected in the recent “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – a pledge spearheaded by the United Nations that establishes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – “No Poverty,” “Zero Hunger,” “Good Health and Well-being,” “Quality Education,” “Gender Equality,” “Clean Water and Sanitation,” “Affordable and Clean Energy,” “Decent Work and Economic Growth,” “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure,” “Reduced Inequality,” “Sustainable Cities and Communities,” “Responsible Consumption and Production, “Climate Action,” Life Below Water,” “Life on Land,” “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions,” “Partnerships to achieve the Goal” that aim to alleviate poverty, safeguard peace and promote global prosperity. While these goals, rights, and freedoms represent critical standards on the way to sustainable and equitable development of mankind, their achievement remains a moving target across the world.

In this context, the rapid arrival and adoption of digital technologies have been viewed with optimism, with citizens, policy-makers, and scholars worldwide putting great hopes into the potential of digital solutions to help reach envisaged goals. Meeting these expectations, digital technologies have proved themselves vital in supporting education (Lehmann et al. 2015; Winkler and Söllner 2018; Oeste-Reiß et al. 2017), collaboration (Seeber et al. 2020; De Vreede and Briggs 2019), social inclusion of vulnerable groups (AbuJarour and Krasnova 2017; AbuJarour et al. 2017), as well as alleviating inequality (Carter et al. 2013).

On the other hand, growing evidence points at the unintended negative consequences of growing digitalization. Across a variety of contexts, the use of digital technologies and increasingly artificial intelligence has been linked to bias and discrimination (e.g., Eubanks 2018), social inequalities (e.g., O’Neil 2016), exclusion, instead of inclusion of vulnerable groups (Eubanks 2018), misinformation, information overload and fake news (e.g., Meinert et al. 2018; Moravec et al. 2018), the emergence of echo chambers (Kitchens et al. 2020), surveillance and privacy intrusions (e.g., Zuboff 2019).

Against this background, this track focuses on empirical and conceptual research about application domains, methods, techniques, prototypes, consequences of information systems that foster human rights and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among others, we further want to investigate how people shape information systems during their practical use to reach a sustainable and equitable development of mankind. We welcome submissions that focus on the design, development, and effects of such information systems alike. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Bias and Discrimination
• Fairness in Algorithms
• Fair Work and Inclusive Workplaces
• Digital Inequality
• Designing Technology for Dignity
• Ethics of Information Systems
• Social Inclusion of Vulnerable Groups
• Refugee Tech
• Technology and Global South
• Information Technology for Development
• Value-Sensitive IS Design
• Social Inclusion and Education (e.g. learning groups, vocational training, teaching learning scenarios)
• Culture sensitive design of teaching learning approaches
• Social Inclusion and Collaboration
• The Role of Technology in Overcoming Humanitarian Crisis
• Labor Unions and Social Partners
• Peace, Justice, Institutions
• Technology, Health and Well-Being
• Surveillance Capitalism, Privacy and Security
• Cyberbullying and Digital Aggression

References:

• 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda; https://sdgs.un.org/goals
  
• AbuJarour, S., Krasnova, H. (2017) “Understanding the Role of ICTs in Promoting Social Inclusion: The Case of Syrian Refugees in Germany”, European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2017), Guimarães, Portugal.
  
• AbuJarour, S., Krasnova, H., Díaz Andrade, A., Olbrich, S., Tan, C.-W., Urquhart, C., Wiesche, M. (2017) “Empowering Refugees with Technology: Best Practices and Research Agenda”, Panel Proposal, European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2017), Guimarães, Portugal.
  
• Carter, Michelle, Deborah J. Armstrong, Allen S. Lee, Eleanor T. Loiacono, and Jason B. Thatcher. “Social Inclusion in a Hyperconnected World.” (2013) AMCIS 2013 Proceedings.
  
• De Vreede, Gert-Jan, and Robert O. Briggs. “A program of collaboration engineering research and practice: Contributions, insights, and future directions.” Journal of Management Information Systems 36.1 (2019): 74-119.
  
• Eubanks, V. (2018). Automating Inequality: How High-tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. First edition. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press,. Print.
  
• Kitchens, B., Johnson, S.L. & Gray, P. (2020). Understanding Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles: The Impact of Social Media on Diversification and Partisan Shifts in News Consumption. MIS Quarterly, 44(4), 1–32.
  
• Lehmann, K., Oeste, S., Janson, A., Söllner, M., & Leimeister, J. M. (2015). Flipping the Classroom–IT-unterstützte Lerneraktivierung zur Verbesserung des Lernerfolges einer universitären Massenlehrveranstaltung. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, 52(1), 81-95.
  
• Meinert, J., Mirbabaie, M., Dungs, S., & Aker, A. (2018). Is it really fake?–Towards an understanding of fake news in social media communication. In International Conference on Social Computing and Social Media (pp. 484-497). Springer, Cham.
  
• Moravec, P., Minas, R., Dennis, A. R. (2018). “Fake News on Social Media: People Believe What They Want to Believe When It Makes No Sense at All,” SSRN Electronic Journal (January 2018). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3269541.
  
• Mondal, M., Silva, L. A., Benevenuto, F. (2017). “A Measurement Study of Hate Speech in Social Media,” HT 2017 – Proceedings of the 28th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, pp. 85–94. (https://doi.org/10.1145/3078714.3078723).
  
• O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown Publishing Group, USA.
  
• Oeste-Reiß, S., Bittner, E., & Söllner, M. (2017). Yes You Can-Empowering Lecturers to Simulate Collaboration among Learners in the Disciplines of Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking Regardless of Class Size.
  
• Seeber, I.; Bittner E.; Briggs, R. O.; de Vreede, T.; de Vreede, G. J.; Elkins, A.; Maier, R.; Merz, A.B.; Oeste-Reiß, S.; Randrup, N.; Schwabe, G.; Söllner, M. (2020): Machines as teammates: A research agenda on AI in team collaboration. Information & Management (57, 2).
  
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
  
• Winkler, R., Soellner, M. (2018). Unleashing the potential of chatbots in education: A state-of-the-art analysis.
  
• Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs.