Concerns about ethical use of technology
The collaboration draws together strands of work carried on by academics from a number of different Universities and boasts a Co Principal Investigator team (Dr Karise Hutchinson and Dr John Bustard of Ulster University). The tourism and events contexts offer fertile ground through which to examine perceptions and experience around the ethical use of technology in enabling and engaging fans in experience co-creation.
Arguably, the seed around which the nascent collaboration is coalescing is the work of Dr John Bustard of Ulster University and Dr Nigel Williams of Portsmouth University. Their mutual interest in International Events and Tourism, particularly through the lens of ICT enabled many-to-many co-creation and its implications in how to better manage and improve experience in these contexts was reflected in their individual work with the International North West 200 (NW200) and Bournemouth Airshow respectively. John and the team at Ulster University were interested in increasing engagement through social media in support of the NW200’s existing fan engagement with award winning results. Nigel was experimenting with the novel use of chat-bots to interact with spectators at Bournemouth Airshow.
The overlap in their interests led them to pursue a common research path (enabled by securing Ulster’s Research Challenge Fund) on the application of social media enabled “chatbots” in support of not only discrete events like International road racing or airshows but also destinations or indeed whole regions.
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