Age Diversity, Smart Mobility and Artificial Intelligence

Calendar

When:

3 April 2025 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

2025-04-03T17:00:00+01:00

2025-04-03T19:00:00+01:00

Where:

University of Westminster
309 Regent St.
London W1B 2HW
UK

Cost:

Free

CAMRI Seminars

Please join the Westminster Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) for a research seminar with Dr Maria Sourbati, exploring age and mobility in the AI era.

Details

In this presentation we reflect on ongoing (2025-) and completed fieldwork (2022-23) in Munich, Germany and Brighton, UK, on how digital tracking technologies are used in mobility contexts –often with the intention of being able to track own movements or the movements of others. In this paper we conceptualise smart mobility as an ‘ecosystem’ comprising mobility practices, data, digital networks, material/physical geographies, and digital devices and access (Loos, Sourbati & Behrend, 2023). We draw on rich empirical examples of firstly young people who are monitored at a distance when walking home from school or when at home in Munich, and secondly, older adults who use smart mobility apps when taking public transport (buses, bicycle, ride sharing) or track their own movements in Brighton. We will critically reflect on the marginalisation of younger and older people in media technology research and policy contexts. Age discrimination has remained largely unchallenged in research infrastructures (tools, funding), material mobility infrastructures, including AI/tech design, and institutional regulatory frameworks. As with other areas of digital communications, the social justice implications of older and younger people’ media use remain largely unchallenged in a research and funding culture that places too much emphasis on age related vulnerability and/or decline.  We discuss our findings on how both younger and older users use digital platforms to track their exercise activities, to find information about bus or train timetables or share where they are in real time to notify family members about their whereabouts, but also on their critical reflections on data tracking.

Biography

Dr Claire Elisabeth Dungey is a Research Fellow at the University of Brighton. She has a PhD in anthropology from Aarhus University. Her research mainly focuses on everyday mobility patterns, such as children’s school journeys, as well as themes such as surveillance, care relations and future aspirations based on fieldwork in both rural and urban areas in Africa and Europe. In Claire’s current project she is doing ethnographic fieldwork in the UK on older people’s experiences of mobility and digital technologies. Forthcoming publication: Peacock V, Bruun K, Dungey C and Shapiro M (eds) (May 2025). Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time. Bristol University Press.

Dr Maria Sourbati is Senior Lecturer in the school of Art & Media at the University of Brighton. Her current research explores social and policy implications of emerging technologies with a focus on mobility, age and data. Maria is the UK lead in the AgeAI study which critically investigates discourses and practices surrounding the deployment of AI systems in five European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK) with a focus on ageing populations