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Description
Aims:
Cybersafety and Online Harms is an area of increasing technical, societal, and political importance. The main aim of the module is to provide students with the ability to rigorously study online harms, so they have the knowledge and skills to responsibly contribute to the safety of online systems. Specifically, it will introduce students to:
- Definitions and examples of online harms.
- Prominent examples of online harms.
- Basic notions of Web ecosystems, social networks, and online behaviour.
- Methodologies for qualitatively and quantitatively studying online harms.
- Data science tools for data-driven analysis of online harms.
- Differential impact that online harms behaviours have on members/ groups within society.
- Online harm mitigation mechanisms (e.g., content moderation) and how different mechanisms impact online harms behaviours, and differentially impact members/ groups within society.
Intended learning outcomes:
On successful completion of the module, a student will be able to:
- Describe the complexities of online harms on the modern Web.
- Critically analyse online harms and evaluate them in their appropriate societal contexts.
- Design and conduct qualitative and quantitative studies of online harms, interpret their results and explain them.
- Source, evaluate, and apply state of the art techniques for mitigation of online harms.
Indicative content:
Students will be introduced to a range of topics related to online harms to provide a holistic understanding of safety online. This includes topics on understanding the characteristics of different online harms, how they manifest in and across different online platform, how online harms are being mitigates, and the implications of these mitigation mechanisms on society. These topics are discussed within the context of modern Web.
The following are indicative of the topics that will be explore during this module:
- Background topics: foundations of social networks and data science, intro to research methods.
- Cyberbullying.
- Hateful and Toxic Speech.
- Coordinated Harassment.
- The role of images on online harms.
- Misinformation and disinformation.
- The role of state actors in disinformation and influence operations.
- Polarization.
- The role of fringe social networks.
- Moderation and de-platforming.
- The economics of cybersafety and the relationship with cybercrime.
In exploring these topics, students will be introduced to a rich set of case study examples that help to provide real-world context.
Requisites:
To be eligible to select this module as optional or elective, a student must be registered on a programme and year of study for which it is formally available.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 8th April 2024.
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