Loneliness in the Digital Age (LIDA): Developing Strategies for Empathy and Trust

孤独是21世纪西方社会面临的最重大挑战之一。研究不仅表明，每10个人中就有1个人孤独，而且我们这个正在彻底变革的社会可能会让情况变得更糟。我们生活中越来越大的比例生活在网络环境中，越来越多的人现在在家中工作，远离公共办公室的社会环境，人们通常预计员工会在很长一段时间内离家工作。创建一个无国界的欧洲也促进了劳动力的流动性，在那里，一段时间远离家工作不再罕见，特别是对年轻人来说。虽然之前对孤独的大部分研究都集中在慢性孤独上，但正是这种新的“短暂孤独”更容易受到间歇性孤独的影响，而且间歇性孤独者不太可能采取措施应对一阵阵孤独。LIDA试图绘制出线上和线下环境中对孤独的不同经历和反应，并通过使用联合设计和创造性方法，探索在线环境中创造性干预的可能性，通过利用对他人的移情来帮助管理孤独时期。我们打算与三个暂时分离的群体合作：(I)移居英国就业的移民工人；ii)重新融入其社区的青年罪犯；以及(Iii)临时驻扎在海外的人员)。通过与这些社区的成员共同参与研究和设计，这个项目将建立使用数字技术来解决这一新的社会问题的新方法。我们还将探索这些群体在如何体验和管理日常生活中的孤独时刻方面有哪些共同之处，并考察家庭、工作场所以及参与者周围的物体和人对孤独的影响的个体差异。我们的项目将从与合作组织合作开始，确定代表这些群体的人愿意参与研究。之后，访谈和焦点小组讨论将捕捉到对参与者生活的丰富见解，重点是他们的传记和经历，因为他们与最近生活中的转变有关。这将为我们提供一个基础，用来描绘这些人经历的孤独的“情节”，无论他们是在线上还是线下管理的，以及移情和信任在改善这些经历中扮演了什么角色。在此阶段还将制定量化措施，以便能够对第二阶段的活动进行评估。这将涉及在参与这些活动之前和之后对参与者进行调查。这项纵向调查还将扩展到目标社区的其他成员，以对在线体验和社会参与之间的关系进行因果检验。第二阶段将侧重于开发新技术，以抵消第一阶段工作中确定的与孤独和分离有关的负面经历。首先，我们将回到之前的参与者那里，收集他们对我们初步调查结果的回应和意见。随后，具有社区参与、创意艺术和技术设计背景的研究人员将与我们的参与者单独或在小组研讨会上合作，共同创造一套具有挑衅性的新设计概念，以缓解他们的孤独时刻。这些活动的结果将是一系列具有挑衅性的新技术和创造性活动，这些活动将在几个月的时间内提供给我们的少数参与者。这些创新技术的“真实世界”实地试验将丰富我们现有的知识，即技术和创造性实践如何通过驾驭同理心来缓解孤独的经历。

Loneliness is one of the most significant challenges facing Western society in the 21st century. Not only does research suggest that 1 in 10 people are lonely, our radically transforming society threatens to make the situation significantly worse. Increasingly large proportions of our lives are being lived in online environments, more people are now working from home, away from the social environment of the communal office, and workers are commonly expected to work away from home for protracted periods of time. The creation of a borderless Europe has also contributed to a more mobile workforce, where working away from home for periods of time is no longer unusual, especially for younger people. While much of the previous research on loneliness has focused upon chronic loneliness, it is this new breed of the 'transient lonely' that is more vulnerable to episodic periods of loneliness and it is the episodically lonely who are less likely to take steps to deal with bouts of loneliness.LIDA seeks to map different experiences and responses to loneliness in both online and offline environments and, through the use of co-design and creative methodologies, explore the potential for creative interventions in online environments to help manage periods of loneliness by harnessing empathy for, and with, others. We intend to work with three temporarily separated groups: (i) migrant workers moving to the UK for employment; ii) young offenders who are being reintegrated into their communities, and; iii) personnel who are stationed temporarily overseas). By engaging with members of these communities throughout as co-researchers and co-designers, this project will establish new ways of using digital technology to address this emerging social issues. We will also look to explore what commonalities these groups have in how they experience and manage moments of loneliness in their everyday lives, and examine individual differences in how the home, the workplace, and the objects and people surrounding our participants influence these.Our project will begin by working with partnering organisations to identify people representing these groups willing to participate in the research. Following this, interviews and focus group discussions will capture rich insights into the lives of our participants, focusing on their biographies and experiences as they relate to recent transitions in their lives. This will provide us a basis with which to map the 'episodes' of loneliness experienced by these individuals, whether they are managed online or offline, and what role empathy and trust plays in ameliorating these experiences. Quantitative measures will also be developed at this stage to enable evaluation of Phase 2 activities. This will involve surveying participants in those activities before and after engagement. This longitudinal survey will also be extended to other members of the targeted communities to provide a causal test of the relationship between online experiences and social involvement. The second phase will focus on developing new technologies to counteract negative experiences related to loneliness and separation identified in the first phase of work. At first, we will return to our previous participants to gather their responses and input on our initial findings. Following this, researchers with a background in community engagement, the creative arts and technology design will work with our participants either on their own or during group workshops to co-create a set of provocative new design concepts to alleviate their moments of loneliness. The result of these engagements will be a set of provocative new technologies and creative activities that will be given to a small number of our participants for a period of several months. This 'real world' field trial of these innovative technologies will enrich our existing knowledge of how technology and creative practice may alleviate experiences of loneliness through harness empathy.