News

On March 1, 2021, the Centre for Social Informatics celebrated its 10th anniversary of establishment. At its inception, it had 16 members; today, with 25 members, it is one of the largest centres at University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences.

The Project CYBERSAFEMOOC is financed by ERASMUS + Programme and continues the projects ODKLIKNI! and CYBERSAFE. It will address the topic of online violence against girls which is a pressing problem that many school professionals are not equipped enough to address or tackle.

The COST Action International Interdisciplinary Network on Smart Healthy Age-friendly Environments (Net4Age-Friendly) started in end October 2020. The Action has formal representatives from 41 countries. The Action already gathers a network of 260 researchers from 50 countries around the world, two also from the Centre for Social Informatics, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Dr. Vesna Dolničar, Dr. Simona Hvalič Touzery).

Due to the COVID-19 crisis and the restrictive measures taken worldwide, violence against women and girls seems to have increased. Women's rights groups and victims support groups reported an increase of domestic violence and dramatic effects on the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls. However, another aspect of the crisis is still under-reported and official data is lacking: The effects of COVID-19 on cyber violence against girls and women are still under investigation.

The Centre for Social Informatics participated at 12th World Conference of Gerontechnology. We gave two presentations, among others on the psychosocial impacts of telemonitoring system utilization and on the psychological outcomes of telecare use in informal care and as i-evAALution research partner participated in the preparation of the presentation on the i-evAALution randomized control trial.

Dr. Katja Prevodnik presented the results of an intervention study on the use of telemedicine equipment among patients with chronic disease at the ISG 2020 conference, which took place in early October in virtual form. The research group was invited by prof. dr. Walter Boot, who organized a symposium about International perspectives on technology use: Adoption, proficiency, and relationships with health and well-being.

The research group working on the project Understanding and analysis of users’ needs for the development of e-services for integrated social and health care in the aging society attended the virtual annual conference of The Gerontological Society of America. They presented a poster with the results of an intervention study on the use of a telemedicine system among patients with chronic diseases in Slovenia.

At UL, Faculty of Social Sciences, Centre for Social Informatics we have initiated the coordination of the Erasmus+ project. The project "Building teachers competence about cyber violence against girls" (CYBERVAG MOOC) is coordinated by the researcher Barbara Brečko, PhD. The project involves six other partners from five European countries (Greece, Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia and United Kingdom).

The bilateral project “Digital transformation of quantitative data collection in social science research: Integrating survey data collection in social science research: Integrating survey data collection with big data and paradata for identifying social behaviour" took place from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2020, with participation of the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) and the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research (SNI), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.

The ‘Mutual learning regional conference on good practices and lessons learned from countering hate speech online’, which was organised online between 14th and 15th October 2020, presented good practices, lessons learned and developments in combating hate speech online. It brought together experts and practitioners from Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia and also experts from other EU Member States. The aim of the conference was to contribute to the mutual learning in this important field.