These past  weeks I was actually able to make it to Edinburgh and meet some instructors and my supervisor in person! It was so much fun and I actually was able to make way more progress on my project planning than what I have been able to do over Teams. I think one part of this is the fact that Teams makes it difficult for me to really be in the moment and I tend to find myself rushing my thought and ideas.

As I stated in my last post, I have really been enjoying some of the readings from my intensives that are not DIS related and I have now found a way to integrate some of these learnings into my project. One thing I really loved about Data Civics is that it is a methodology (to an extent) that will really fit with my project since I am trying to gather as much information as possible to build a neural network. Plus, I found some of the readings on trust and inter-organisational work really beneficial for the social psychology portion of my network.

I found this semester really challenging with all the deadline condensed into the last 3 weeks of classes, but I am happy I was able to connect with my supervisor in person which lead to me solidifying my project to a point where I can present it to my project partner.

I have decided to try and build a sociologically informed neural network that will look to predicts opinions on the revitalization of abandoned and underutilised buildings in Scotland. This idea came to be from discussions with my project partner on the challenges in getting people on-board with their mission of saving these buildings. I then thought about how we could save the company + funders time and resources by redirecting them to areas where citizens are more likely to buy-in to their model. It’s not that I don’t think it is important to try and have people et on board with these kind of sustainable initiatives, but real estate and preserving culture are tough issues to tackle on a building by building basis. instead, I think it is easier to lead by example and show through success stories how saving abandoned buildings can be beneficial for the overall community even if it is scary or “undesirable”.  If the network gets to plan, then yay! If it does not, then it can be added to the literature on SINNs that I have seen and hopefully contribute to successful networks in the future!

Semester 2: Weeks 7-8 / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society (2022-2023) by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0