The Digital Good Network: exploring equity, sustainability and resilience in people's relationships with and through digital technologies

Digital technologies are not always good for societies. Across research, policy, industry and civil society, how to define, measure and build good digital societies needs urgent attention. The digital good is ill-defined and contested, and the resulting lack of consensus can be harmful. For example, algorithmic decision-making can introduce bias under the guise of fairness; policies designed to make social media safer are experienced by users as doing the opposite. To limit future harms and ensure that digital technologies have positive outcomes, The Digital Good Network (DGN) will deliver an interdisciplinary, social science-led research programme centred on the urgent, neglected question of what the digital good should look like and how it can be achieved.

DGN bridges disciplines and institutions and is global in outlook. It is led by transdisciplinary researchers at different career stages and by partners from policy, industry, community and cultural sectors. DGN will:

support research projects and methodological innovation across disciplines and various dimensions of the digital good;

offer internships, fellowships and training;

host technology design sprints and workshops;

co-produce research with policy, industry and communities; and

produce a Digital Good Index, based on original research, horizon scanning and open data.

Ultimately, DGN will lead to a step-change in enabling societies to realise the digital good.

DGN?will generate new insights into urgent normative questions relating to people's relationships with and through digital technologies (or 'digital relationships'), by focusing on three societal challenges that are crucial to envisioning good?relationships with and through digital technologies:?equity, resilience and sustainability. The House of Lords' Beyond Digital report highlights the first two: 1) equity, because digital relationships take place in conditions of power asymmetry and structural inequity and 2) resilience, because...