Month: March 2018

Last year I wrote a post about why mass citizen science projects are the perfect match for TV. In the past few months, Joi Polloi has worked on three new and exciting citizen science projects for the BBC and Channel 4, to help the public find out something about themselves, and for scientists to find out more about the public.

What is citizen science?

Citizen science is scientific research conducted in whole or in part, by amateur scientists, or ‘the public’. The first recorded use of the term ‘citizen science’ was in 1989, and involved 225 Americans collecting rain samples for an acid-rain awareness raising campaign. Fast forward almost 30 years later to 2018 and citizen science is being used to analyse millions of data samples, images and more using millions of participants. With the advent of broadcast media, and the internet, you can conduct citizen science on an enormous scale.

Joi Polloi & Citizen Science

This isn’t the first time we’ve collaborated on projects like this — we’ve worked on several mass participation citizen science projects over the past five years which have used TV audiences to gather huge numbers of participants for academic researchers, including Embarrassing Bodies: My Mindchecker, and Psychopath Night. This gives researchers a far larger body of data to work with than is normally possible.

Recent news stories have highlighted how some companies have used data gathered in personality test and quizzes to deduce personality traits without consent, and deliver highly targeted advertising and other messages on that basis. Because the tests we have delivered sometimes reveal sensitive personal information, at every stage, security and data protection is actively considered and great lengths are taken to design anonymity into the process of collecting this information. Strict controls are in place to ensure that data is not personally identifiable, and only shared with researchers by secure means.

Are You Autistic — Channel 4

Tonight (28th March 2018), at 10pm, Channel 4 are broadcasting a one hour special called Are You Autistic?, to coincide with Autism Awareness Week. It’s presented by Anna Richardson and campaigners Georgia Harper and Sam Ahern, who both have autism themselves. It aims to challenge common perceptions of the disability and help people identify autism within themselves.

Last year we helped design and build an online test for the show to allow the public to measure certain traits of autism within themselves. Autism is a complex condition, and the test has numerous questions, so it had to be designed to be compelling to complete, and provide feedback to participants about themselves in a scientifically accurate and sensitive way.

A huge amount of data was collected, and the results were analysed by Prof Simon Baron-Cohen (Director, Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge). Watch tonight to find out full details about the scale of participation and conclusions which will be revealed as part of the show…

Secrets of Happiness — BBC

As part of their Tomorrow’s World campaign, we worked with the BBC and Dr Peter Kinderman from the University of Liverpool to create a digital survey aimed to help scientists understand how wellbeing, mental health and happiness are linked. Happiness is not a clinical term, which phrases things in terms of lack of anxiety & depression — but it is a well known public term.

Participants are asked questions about factors that influence wellbeing and mental health, and provided personalised feedback on how to beat the blues and boost happiness levels. This is a great motivation for participants — not only are they helping boost research, they also get something meaningful in return.

In a unique piece of research participants are then invited back six weeks later to take a follow-up ‘round 2’ test. This gives researchers an insight into how factors change over time.

The launch of the test gained coverage including a feature on BBC Breakfast, and on Radio 4.

The test is still open at secretsofhappiness.co.uk . Full details of the results will be published when all the responses have been analysed by researchers. It has gained far more submissions than normally accessible this kind of research, currently ~37k.

What do you do to express yourself, does this improve your health, and how do you compare to the rest of the nation? This are the questions that BBc New Generation Thinker Dr Daisy Fancourt from University College London is studying, exploring potential connections between creativity and mental wellbeing. This is ahead of the larger Get Creative BBC Arts Campaign.

By taking a ten-minute online test, which mixes questions about which creative activities you do with questions about your well being, participants are able to provide vital data for researchers. In turn the participant receives information about how their creativity compares to the nation, and given inspirational links and advice.

The test is open at creativitytest.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk and full details of the results will be published at a later date during the campaign.

The great thing about citizen science tests such as those above is that they generate huge traction, and much more focus from the participant.

If you’re interested learning more about citizen science, what it can do for research, or just generally about our projects, get in touch.

If you’re someone in or amongst the digital, tech or marketing industry you’ve probably seen the term ‘GDPR’ being circulated at the moment. If you don’t know what it is, first of all, it stands for ‘general data protection regulation’ and it’s replacing the 1995/1998 Data Protection Act. It’s standardising, expanding and essentially modernising a wide range of privacy legislation into one central set of regulations to help further protect EU citizens from privacy and data breaches. It’s being put into place on the 25th of May, 2018. Before you ask, yes; we’ll all still have to adhere to these regulations once we leave the EU as the UK has already stated that compliance with GDPR will not be affected by Brexit.

As a company that places a high value on user privacy and data protection, our view is that GDPR is, frankly, a long time coming. In a world where technology is racing ahead with things like super targeted ads and the threat of AI-led security threats being bandied around, the need to protect how organisations use customer or user data is becoming increasingly important and the current DPA is simply getting out of date.

What are the key changes?

Consent

Organisations must now be extremely clear when asking for a user’s consent by communicating exactly how they will be using someone’s personal data. Consent from a user must be documented and it must be verifiable. Pre-ticked boxes or inactivity, which are prevalent within charity websites registration forms, do not count as consent under GDPR and therefore only an affirmative action such as ticking a box will act as clear demonstration of consent. Furthermore, when processing consent for multiple purposes, each must be clearly specified and distinguishable. For example, when a user ticks a box to register with an organisation’s website this doesn’t necessarily mean they consent to the organisation’s email marketing. Therefore a separate indication of consent would be needed in an equally intelligible and accessible way before sending them a newsletter.

This also means that organisations will have to go back through their mailing lists and ensure that everyone on there has previously explicitly consented to receiving their company newsletter. If they can’t prove this consent then the organisation will have to remove them.

Penalties

There’s been a lot of talk of GDPR fines worth €20 million or the equivalent of 4% of annual turnover, but don’t panic. It’s important to note that these are the absolute maximum figures that would be issued and supervisory authorities can instead take a range of actions including warnings and reprimands before issuing fines.

It’s not clear-cut how much a fine would be for breaching regulations. However, what will be taken into account is how the organisation in question has actively tried to take steps towards data privacy and promoting a culture of compliance internally. In other words, intentions and attitudes towards breaches and GDPR as a whole will likely be taken into account.

Increased territorial scope

Essentially, the consequence of GDPR for any organisation that handles personal data outside of the EU is that they will also have to comply with European Data Protection Obligations if they either handle, monitor or process personal data belonging to anyone within the EU. This includes organisations based outside of the EU selling goods and services to any EU citizens, and also includes social networks that want to monitor and offer their service to EU citizens. It is important, for example, that UK and EU based broadcasters and media companies check with international vendors and third party suppliers, including cloud vendors, that they are GDPR compliant.

New data subject rights

Right of access

Anyone is now entitled to contact organisations to which they have given any personal data and request the information on where and why their data is being processed. This would also include transparency in the way that an organisation’s algorithms work to serve up personalised content, for example, how exactly an on-demand TV service generates suggestions to its users. The organisation then has to provide a copy of this data in its entirety and for free in an electronic format. It is therefore highly recommended that data is extremely well internally documented in an audit and part of the reason why data protection officers will be required in most cases, but more on them later. In the case of nonprofit organisations, volunteers will need to be kept just as up to speed on new data regulations as employees to ensure compliance across the entire organisation.

Right to data portability

This is the right for anyone to receive all of their own personal data stored by an organisation in a ‘commonly used and readable format’.

Right to erasure (or the ‘right to be forgotten’)

Anyone has the right to have their personal data held by a organisation erased permanently upon request.

Breach notification

If an organisation handling people’s personal data becomes aware of a data breach within their system they must notify their data subjects (everyone they store personal data on) within 72 hours.

Privacy by design

Privacy and data protection compliance should be considered from start to finish when designing systems rather than bolted on down the line. By approaching a project from the standpoint of privacy by design you can minimise risks of breaches and eliminate potential problems at an early stage. Data minimisation will become a legal requirement within GDPR, meaning organisations should only store and process data that is absolutely necessary for the completion of its duties. This includes limiting access to personal data to only those needing to carry out the processing.

Data protection officers

At the moment, organisations have to register their data processing activities with local data protection authorities. Instead, under GDPR, organisations will be required to keep internal records and an appointment of a data protection officer will become mandatory for organisations that regularly monitor or process personal data on a large scale. They must have thorough knowledge of data protection law and practices and cannot carry out tasks that may result in a conflict of interest.

So, should you be worrying?

No, but you should prepare. GDPR is indeed a fairly big subject which will undoubtedly require some additional research if these regulations are a concern to you or relate to your job responsibilities. There are plenty of online resources designed to educate you on the specific regulations and rules that will come into play at the end of May, so go ahead and do some reading if needed.

Cookies are not considered personally sensitive information therefore organisations can still utilise this form of customer data to provide a tailored experience. It’s the personal information about the individual that is sensitive; for example, names, religious background, sexual orientation and addresses.

How is GDPR a good opportunity?

As an example, newsletters should have much higher engagement rates since everyone receiving them will have explicitly consented to them, rather than receiving something they never wanted in the first place and therefore will never open. As a result of this need for explicit consent, levels of accuracy within segmentation should improve and organisations should ultimately gain much better insights into their audiences and consumer behaviour, allowing organisations to provide better quality content and customer service.

How has Joi Polloi prepared?

Even though we have always viewed privacy and data security as a priority within our work, we will be taking any necessary steps to comply with GDPR. We understand how important it is to help our clients adhere to GDPR and will ensure that the design, development and most importantly the handling of data within what we make is compliant and of the highest security standards.

If you feel your organisation needs a helping hand in preparing for GDPR then feel free to get in touch — info@joipolloi.com.

A new home for Channel 4

In 2017, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) began consulting on whether Channel 4 should move out of London, and relocate to elsewhere in the UK. Many cities across the nations and regions threw their hats into the ring in order to attract the economic benefits and prestige associated with being home to one of our national broadcasters. As home to a burgeoning creative and digital cluster, Sheffield City Council (and their inward investment department Creative Sheffield) were keen to make the case for why Sheffield would make a great home to the channel.

The City Council’s bid has the support of the many cultural and media organisations within the city, including Warp Films, Doc/Fest & both Universities.

Here at Joi Polloi we’ve worked extensively with Channel 4 over the past 7 years, delivering over 60 digital projects ranging from programme support to corporate, so have a really good understanding of the organisation, its people and values.

The online campaign

Our brief from Creative Sheffield was to inspire residents, challenge industry preconceptions, and demonstrate the variety of creative work already being produced in the city to dispel the perception that it lacks an existing cluster of film, TV and digital production.

While the financial and economic benefits of the move to the city and the nation are important, we wanted to tell a bit more of a human story.

We picked up the idea that if Channel 4 was a city, it would be like Sheffield. Being audacious; standing up and making trouble; championing super humans; and being a distinctive voice were key aspects of the Channel 4 brand personality which resonated with those who live and work in the city.

And we thought the best way to tell this story would be to involve the filmmakers and TV production companies already created amazing stuff in the city.

So in November 2017 we put out an open call for any creatives, technologists and filmmakers to submit work they have created which demonstrated the themes. Within a couple of weeks, we have received nearly 300 pieces of video from over 50 individuals and companies, ranging from animation, to comedy, music and drama.

We added to this footage by featuring well-known people from the city who embodied Channel 4 values, including Helen Sharman, Michael Palin, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Kell Brook, Seb Coe and Jarvis Cocker. We also challenged stereotypes of the city head on — reimagining snooker and the Full Monty as embodiments of the Channel 4 brand personality.

The whole package was edited into a fast-paced, punchy, 60 second TV-trail-like video. We used the city’s creative talents as much as possible — the soundtrack was generously provided by Sheffield band Bring Me the Horizon; editing was done locally; and the voiceover was recorded by local up-and-coming actress Lois Pearson.

We also built a funky single page microsite to host the video, and provide further details about the actual bid.

What we learnt

Part of the purpose of this project was to raise awareness that Sheffield is about more than snooker, steel and male strippers — that there is a thriving creative, digital, film and TV industry, which is on the verge of something big.

From Sumo Digital making games played by millions; to Sheffield Live running a full time local TV channel; to Warp Films making innovative award winning films and TV; to one of the most respected annual global gatherings of documentary film and TV makers; to Sheffield Hallam University’s biggest Playstation teaching lab in the world, — we found new inspiration in the rich creativity, optimism and world-class skills within the city and area around us.

What do you think? https://www.c4sheffield.com/