Collaborative Doctoral Partnership – Digital Governance

Digital Governance: protecting human agency in social media platforms is carried out in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission.

Within this project, the Centre for Digitalisation, Democracy and Innovation (CD2I) at the Brussels School of Governance, the Centre for Studies in Media, Innovation and Technology (SMIT) and the HUMAINT project of the Digital Economy Unit, Joint Research Centre site in Sevilla co-supervise a doctoral student in the field of digital governance, on the topic of trustworthy artificial intelligence. 

After a competitive open call, Carlos Entrena was selected and started his doctoral studies on 1 June 2022. His project aims to study how human agency can be protected in platforms such as TikTok, which is a significant exponent of AI leverage in social media for automating content mediation. 

This research explores how contextually situated encounters happen between users and TikTok’s algorithm. To do that, it brings social media platforms into the AI ethics and risks narrative. It also parts from an interdisciplinary perspective of the issue, viewing AI systems through a sociotechnical lens. 

The Collaborative Doctoral Partnership is co-funded by JRC and VUB and runs for a period of five years (2021-2026). Our team will host Carlos Entrena during his doctoral trajectory in years 1 and 4 of his doctoral studies.