The “Society 5.0 Ethics” initiative is a largescale, cross-cutting and future-oriented initiative, concerned with building a strong ethical call to action across sectors, not just acknowledging, but addressing how digital transformations are fundamental drivers of change in the social, cultural, ethical, economic, health and environmental dimensions; in design and creative practices; in business and enterprise.

Our initiative “takes a critical approach” to the ethics of next generation digital transformations, positions human experience within broader social ecosystems and convenes world leaders in a Summit meeting to articulate agendas for policy and practice recommendations that are holistic, responsive, and appropriate.

This initiative actively builds frameworks for fairer, secure, and technologically resilient futures by bringing central attention on “ethical practice” in future tech development and applications, working directly with stakeholders across sectors. The focal point of these events to foster conversations that lead to stronger resilience, security, and trust in future technology developments, emphasizing how the importance of Innovation around technological and infrastructure solutions needs to be tested robustly against possible futures, embedded within strong understanding of appropriate governance and economic frameworks, and progressed in a way that builds broad participation, social licence and learning.

An initial Summit meeting on June 17-18, 2024, in Melbourne Australia, is followed by six global forums around the world, all focused on next generation ethics stemming from converging and overlapping disruptive technologies. In this Australia-based Summit, Annette Markham and Payal Arora (Utrecht University) join other leading experts from Monash University (Sarah Pink), University of Western Australia and the Minderoo Foundation's Centre (Julia Powles), and RMIT University (Lisa Given, Jason Potts, Julian Thomas, and Karin Verspoor). Alongside industry and community experts, we discuss key global issues and potential solutions at scale, across borders.

The "X" in "X Literacies" is a "fill in the blank" way of indicating that in the 21st century of convergence of media, digitalization, datafication, and AI, critical literacies overlap. The "Future" in this project title implies a future-oriented mindset, focused on what humans will and should become as our everyday lives and sociotechnical structures become ever more entangled with data collection and analytics, synthetic autonomous AI agents, and more embedded and embodied digital technologies.

Fostering critical literacies around digitalization and datafication is a key link in the effort to build more resilient, inclusive, and democratic communities. Annette Markham leads initiatives under the umbrella of "Critical X Literacies," which often involves designing and conducting various types of public engagement experiments within and with different communities of practice, and also studying what types of prompts and interventions suit different types of people in such engagements.

Ongoing experiments include testing pedagogical models for guided autoethnography among young adults in higher education settings ("guided autoethnography" and "aggregated autoethnography" of lived experience), collaborating with other artists, activists, and academics to stage performative installations and exhibitions (the Museum of Random Memory), and bringing together city planners, policymakers, and neighborhood residents together in creative workshops to critique automated data systems in smart cities (Moodboarding as Method).

publications on "Guided Autoethnography" and other interventional pedagogies as critical data literacy methods

• Markham, A. N. (2018). Critical pedagogy as a response to datafication. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(8). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809470.
• Markham, A., & Pronzato, R. (2023) A critical (theory) data literacy: Tales from the field. Information and Learning Sciences. (Vol “Ahead of Print”). https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-06-2023-0087. 
• Pronzato, R., & Markham, A. (2023). Returning to critical pedagogy in a world of datafication. Convergence. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221148108. 

publications on moodboarding as method for building creative practice as citizen social science in urban settings

• Markham, A., and PlaceLab. (2023). In The Mood (Moodboarding as Method). Research Report. Available from: https://placelab.rmit.edu.au/app/uploads/2023/05/RMIT-PlaceLab_In-The-Mood_Research-Project-Report.pdf

Publications on literacies for futuremaking: Building models for critical data/digital literacy in various audiences

• Markham, A. (2020). The limits of the imaginary: Challenges to intervening in future speculations of memory, data, and algorithms. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820929322
• Markham, A. N. (2019). Taking Data Literacy to the Streets: Critical Pedagogy in the Public Sphere. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418809.  
• Markham, A., & Pereira, G. (2019). Analyzing public interventions through the lens of experimentalism: The case of the Museum of Random Memory. Digital Creativity, 30(4), 235-256. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2019.1688838
• Markham, A., & Pereira, G. (2019). Experimenting with algorithmic memory-making: Lived experience and future-oriented ethics in critical data science. Frontiers in Big Data (Proceedings of the 13th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media). https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00035

Long Title: "Developing a city-wide survey to measure Social Transitions and Adaptations for Inclusive, Resilient and Sustainable Futures (STAIRS)"

This survey design and deployment project build a strong sociological tool that the City of Melbourne can adopt to better understand how initiatives are being perceived and valued by residents, at scale. This is the second pilot test of building a bespoke, yet flexible type of largescale survey for cities to use repeatedly, adapting certain segments as crises or needs occur. This type of instrument contributes to a living baseline for city planners, as it contains certain elements that remain consistent and other elements that reflect the continous changes inherent in large urban areas.

This survey, STAIRS, builds specifically from a largescale, Melbourne-wide scoping survey led by Annette Markham in 2022. STAIRS is a largescale, inclusive survey of residents that assesses attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors generally, and specifically benchmarks residents’ positions toward various sustainability initiatives. The MelbourneCBD Survey was made possible by the 2021-2022 interdisciplinary "Digital CBD" project, which combined the strengths of RMIT's ADM+S (Automated Decision Making and Society), Blockchain Innovation Hub, and Digital Ethnography Research Centre. As Melbourne continues to recover from various economic and social shocks of the past three years, it is crucial to assess the perceptions and attitudes of residents about city innovations, large scale events, and crises.

In addition to building and deploying the survey and providing an analysis of findings, the survey dataset will remain easily accessible, so interested parties, especially within city governance, can identify shifts in citizen trends and attitudes. STAIRS is a bespoke but adjustable instrument specifically designed to help respond to the urgent need for Melbourne to transition to sustainable and inclusive futures, through various economic and social initiatives. Part of the city’s response to effectively repair/recover from collapses and crises related to climate change and socio-economic ruptures, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, must include continuous feedback loops between the city and its residents.