One of the topics we’ll be covering in this digital economy week is the emerging personal data economy, where individuals are taking control of their own personal data. My research has explored this theme, looking at how individuals can understand, control and benefit from their data through the lenses of business law and technology.

Marketing Week has just released a timely article on the opportunities and threats that arise from these developments. The article is based on a research report I contributed to through Ctrl-Shift, a market analyst and Web Science Institute industry partner who I work with alongside my PhD research.

The report also features a viewpoint from Sir Nigel Shadbolt on the phenomenon of personal data empowerment;

What you hope it isn’t is a massive landgrab of our individual data only for the benefit of the company… Data is an amazing raw material which, if made available in an appropriate way, is going to change the economic and social landscape.

This week we’ll be covering these issues in ‘Personal data in the hands of individuals’. I look forward to discussing them with you.

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I recently had the pleasure of creating content for and facilitating the Web Science MOOC. Having previously taken part in MOOCs as a student, it was my first time being on the other end of a MOOC platform, and it was just as rewarding.

Having to create a concise but informative introduction to my research was a challenge, but I think I managed to get across some of the key points to spark a good debate amongst the participants. Looking through all the comments I was pleased to see that between them, they had covered a lot of ground.

The discussion step asked participants to try out a tool developed to estimate the value of their personal data. Having tried the tool myself beforehand, I was interested to see what results participants got. It was also a good opportunity to raise questions about the validity of the tool and how meaningful were the conclusions that could be drawn from it.

The week in which my section of the course was ‘live’, many of the issues were discussed in the media; in particular, in relation to the use of personal data by government intelligence agencies, which raised interesting perspectives on commercial data collection. I’m looking forward to the second round of the MOOC, and it will be interesting to see if opinions have changed in light of these media stories.

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