Malmö University Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes
Malmö University, Faculty of Technology and Society (TS), Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT).
2024 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The home is commonly considered a private place to relax and be left alone. When introducing Internet of Things (IoT) into private spaces such as our homes, people transform into users of smart homes. Smart homes offer multiple benefits, such as increased security, entertainment, health, and energy efficiency. However, they also introduce various ethical challenges, such as managing the large amount of personal data in flux. From benign and seemingly harmless activities, such as your ideal indoor temperature or the time you turn your lights off at night, to deeply private and idiosyncratic ones, smart home-generated data can capture the wide-ranging activities that occur in the home. Analyzing ethical concerns related to smart homes requires an approach that explores the concerns contextually, as privacy is widely acknowledged to be defined in situ. Additionally, the interrelated stakeholders involved in developing and delivering smart home services – IoT developers, private companies, users, and lawmakers, to name a few – might approach the smart home context and its ethics differently. Methods to document ethical analyses to continue the exploration of smart home ethics over time and across stakeholder groups are currently lacking. A deeper examination into the role of ethics in smart homes is therefore warranted to develop methods supporting the contextual analysis of ethical risks and concerns. This thesis aims to review the literature on smart home ethics to consider the categories of smart home ethics and define its users. Subsequently, an approach to support ethical analyses of smart homes is developed based on conceptualizing smart homes as digital ecosystems. The analogy of a digital ecosystem has shown promise in supporting discussions across stakeholder groups and unifying the understanding of the context under analysis. The thesis documents the development and evaluation of a digital ecosystem approach and how it supports the contextual analysis of ethics in smart homes. The approach includes three artifacts developed by applying the design science research methodology. The artifacts include a species ontology defining four species of digital ecosystems, a conceptual model to depict the relationships between species and how data flows through the ecosystem, and a method to operationalize ethical analyses of smart homes. The method artifact is designed as a workshop and applies the ontology and conceptual model to support the systematic documentation of the analyses. Three workshops were conducted to evaluate the approach's utility in contextually defining unethical use cases of smart homes and eliciting ethical system requirements. The research contributions include a deeper understanding of smart home ethics and insights into how ethical analyses of domestic IoT might be conducted. Several ethical concerns are discussed in the thesis, such as the surveillance of children, data rights of smart home users beyond the household members, intimate partner violence, IoT gaslighting, IoT forensics, and power dynamics related to intrusive surveillance practices. This work may inform future research and policy developers to consider the smart home as a distinct site with unique challenges, seen as its connotations of being a private space, separate from but not independent of the public domain.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö University Press, 2024. , p. 63
Series
Studies in Computer Science ; 29
Keywords [en]
Smart Homes, Ethics, Internet of Things, Privacy, Surveillance, Digital Ecosystems, Ethical Analysis, Ethical Requirements
National Category
Information Systems, Social aspects
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72602DOI: 10.24834/isbn.9789178775576ISBN: 978-91-7877-556-9 (print)ISBN: 978-91-7877-557-6 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-72602DiVA, id: diva2:1919600
Presentation
2024-12-16, Auditorium B1, Niagara, Malmö University, Malmö, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Note

The papers are not included in the fulltext online.

Available from: 2024-12-09 Created: 2024-12-09 Last updated: 2024-12-12Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. Categories of Ethics in Smart Homes: A Systematic Literature Review
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Categories of Ethics in Smart Homes: A Systematic Literature Review
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72600 (URN)
Available from: 2024-12-09 Created: 2024-12-09 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved
2. Who are the Users of Smart Homes? Surveillance in Domestic IoT Contexts
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Who are the Users of Smart Homes? Surveillance in Domestic IoT Contexts
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72599 (URN)
Note

To be published March, 2025

Available from: 2024-12-09 Created: 2024-12-09 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved
3. Smart Homes as Digital Ecosystems: Exploring Privacy in IoT Contexts
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Smart Homes as Digital Ecosystems: Exploring Privacy in IoT Contexts
2024 (English)In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy / [ed] Gabriele Lenzini; Paolo Mori; Steven Furnell, Portugal: SciTePress, 2024, p. 869-877Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Although smart homes are tasked with an increasing number of everyday activities to keep users safe, healthy, and entertained, privacy concerns arise due to the large amount of personal data in flux. Privacy is widely acknowledged to be contextually dependent, however, the interrelated stakeholders involved in developing and delivering smart home services – IoT developers, companies, users, and lawmakers, to name a few – might approach the smart home context differently. This paper considers smart homes as digital ecosystems to support a contextual analysis of smart home privacy. A conceptual model and an ecosystem ontology are proposed through design science research methodology to systematize the analyses. Four privacy-oriented scenarios of surveillance in smart homes are discussed to demonstrate the utility of the digital ecosystem approach. The concerns pertain to power dynamics among users such as main users, smart home bystanders, parent-child dynamics, and intimate partner relationships and the responsibility of both companies and public organizations to ensure privacy and the ethical use of IoT devices over time. Continuous evaluation of the approach is encouraged to support the complex challenge of ensuring user privacy in smart homes.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Portugal: SciTePress, 2024
Series
ICISSP, ISSN 2184-4356
Keywords
Smart Homes, Internet of Things, Privacy, Digital Ecosystems.
National Category
Computer Sciences Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-67030 (URN)10.5220/0012458700003648 (DOI)2-s2.0-85190898797 (Scopus ID)978-989-758-683-5 (ISBN)
Conference
The 10th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy, February 26-28, 2024, Rome, Italy
Available from: 2024-05-01 Created: 2024-05-01 Last updated: 2024-12-09Bibliographically approved
4. The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes - A Workshop-Based Approach
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes - A Workshop-Based Approach
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72601 (URN)
Note

To be published February 2025

Available from: 2024-12-09 Created: 2024-12-09 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

Comprehensive summary(2227 kB)44 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT02.pdfFile size 2227 kBChecksum SHA-512
86de9af08d7276c357ea5a122637ae259461fc4ab51197b0e03c6ed0fc5a25eebd31021005ed3d6425684d1e98da12e255bda80c58047ac13d0cc6d1f80ba1bb
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full text

Authority records

Bagheri, Sally

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Bagheri, Sally
By organisation
Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT)
Information Systems, Social aspects

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 44 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
isbn
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
isbn
urn-nbn
Total: 278 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf