About PRIME

OVERVIEW

The Protecting Minority Ethnic Communities Online (PRIME) project will deliver innovative harm-reduction interventions, processes and technologies which will transform digital services, especially in the interconnected areas of health, social housing and energy, and create safer online spaces for the UK’s minoritised ethnic population. PRIME was launched in April 2022 by a consortium of universities led by Heriot-Watt. The other consortium partners are The Open University, Cranfield University and the universities of York and Glasgow. It is an interdisciplinary project which brings together academics from the fields of social science, applied linguistics, computer science and data science. PRIME has been funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for a period of three years.

Building a knowledge base 

Enhancing our understanding of the distinctive online harms that minoritised ethnic communities are facing as a result of the digitalisation of essential services.

Co-designing solutions 

Bringing together minoritised ethnic communities, policymakers, regulators, data and computer scientists, and service and platform designers to co-create new harm mitigation goals and processes.

Transforming digital health, housing and energy services 

Engaging with policy actors, regulators, and service providers to tackle racialised inequalities and systemic discrimination in the design and delivery of essential services.

CONTEXT

Over the past few years, the UK and the devolved governments, along with private sector actors, have been digitalising essential services at a rapid pace, a phenomenon accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. And yet, little research has been conducted on the online harms that are likely to arise through the systemic racism, marginalisation and discrimination experienced by minoritised ethnic communities. The rapid digitalisation of essential services in the absence of research investigating the likely impacts of such processes is of immense concern in the current socio-political context. The inequalities that minoritised ethnic communities face in relation to the use, experience and outcomes of ‘offline’ services have been well documented. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly apparent that minoritised ethnic communities are particularly vulnerable to specific online harms such as cyberbullying and hate crime. In this environment, there is a real possibility that the digitalisation of key services will replicate or exacerbate existing inequalities or even create new inequalities or other forms of online harm.

CO-DESIGNING TOOLS AND SOLUTIONS

The PRIME project has been designed to transform research into action. To do this, PRIME will form a Citizen-led Race Equity Living Lab, which will bring together policymakers, regulators, individuals from minoritised ethnic backgrounds and the civil society organisations that work with them, data and computer scientists, and service and platform designers to co-create and co-design new harm-mitigation tools and processes.

Among other things, PRIME will create a Minority Ethnic Harm Reduction Toolkit consisting of: 

  1. Policy guidance for public authorities on minimising harm to minoritised ethnic communities in the regulation, design and delivery of digitalised services.

  2. Educational, training and capacity building resources for minoritised ethnic communities and the civil society organisations that work with them.

  3. A technical view of the harms and mitigations uncovered through structured threat modelling following paradigms used in the cyber security sector such as attack-defence trees.