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The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes – A Workshop-Based Approach
Malmö University, Faculty of Technology and Society (TS), Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT). Malmö University, Internet of Things and People (IOTAP).ORCID iD: 0009-0009-7387-3367
Malmö University, Faculty of Technology and Society (TS), Department of Computer Science and Media Technology (DVMT). Malmö University, Internet of Things and People (IOTAP).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8512-2976
2025 (English)In: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Springer, 2025, Vol. 737 IFIPAICT, p. 226-242Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Smart homes are increasingly popular and offer users multiple benefits, such as increased security, entertainment, health, and energy efficiency. But smart homes also raise ethical challenges. Analyzing ethical risks in smart homes requires an approach that can reveal and analyze the complex consequences of unethical IoT use. Such an analysis, however, is cumbersome and requires including many aspects and stakeholder perspectives. There is a lack of methods to analyze smart homes ethically and document such research results for continual evaluation over time as the smart home and our understanding of its ethics inevitably evolve and change. This work aims to design a workshop methodology to support systematic ethical analyses of smart homes. It builds on previous work considering smart homes as digital ecosystems to contextually examine ethical risks and challenges. A group of research participants were asked to undergo the workshop to evaluate its usefulness in supporting ethical discussions and documenting insights systematically. The results show the feasibility of the workshop design in conducting ethical analyses and eliciting system requirements for smart homes. Several unethical use cases are discussed, such as IoT gaslighting and surveillance concerns related to child users.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2025. Vol. 737 IFIPAICT, p. 226-242
Series
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, ISSN 1868-4238, E-ISSN 1868-422X
Keywords [en]
Digital Ecosystems, Ethics, IoT, Smart Homes, Workshops
National Category
Information Systems, Social aspects
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-74092DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-81900-1_14ISI: 001446575700014Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85215274659ISBN: 9783031818998 (print)ISBN: 9783031819001 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-74092DiVA, id: diva2:1938839
Conference
7th IFIP WG 5.5 International Cross-Domain Conference on Internet of Things, IFIPIoT 2024, 06 Nov-08 Nov 2024, Nice, France
Available from: 2025-02-19 Created: 2025-02-19 Last updated: 2025-04-15Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Role of Ethics in Smart Homes
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
Smart Homes, Ethics, Internet of Things, Privacy, Surveillance, Digital Ecosystems, Ethical Analysis, Ethical Requirements
National Category
Information Systems, Social aspects
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72602 (URN)10.24834/isbn.9789178775576 (DOI)978-91-7877-556-9 (ISBN)978-91-7877-557-6 (ISBN)
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.

Paper II in dissertation as manuscript.

Available from: 2024-12-09 Created: 2024-12-09 Last updated: 2025-06-24Bibliographically approved

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Bagheri, SallyJacobsson, Andreas

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