Cultures of fear can be spread, either deliberately or otherwise, by a wide range of agents including the media, government, science, the arts, industry and politics. The ease of which fear can be generated means that today's society remains inordinately fearful of improbable harms and dangers. A good deal of societal fear stems from mistrust of 'the Other': a term used to describe individuals or groups that are, quite simply, 'not like us'. In this project, we explicitly explore this notion of 'Othering' as it occurs in situations where 'the Other' are seen as "anomalous," "peculiar," or "deviant" and hence negatively perceived, stigmatised, excluded, marginalised and discriminated against. Recent high-profile examples of practices of Othering in the UK include the exclamation that "tens of thousands of eastern Europeans" would enter the UK when immigration restrictions were lifted at the beginning of 2014 resulting in, for instance, a "crime wave", and the "poverty-porn" portrayal on broadcast television of seemingly whole communities of "benefit claimants living off of taxpayers' earnings". Such practices can lead to a lack of tolerance, respect and inclusion, as well as actual fear, mistrust and marginalisation of whole communities; these effects have severe and well-known implications for local communities as well as for national social cohesion. There are significant unanswered questions regarding how acts of Othering translates into effects on real populations and in real contexts, and what role online digital media can have in propagating cultures of fear and mistrust. With online social media, no longer is fear delivered exclusively in a top down manner, (e.g. from government and the mainstream media). Instead it is now also delivered from the grassroots level and therefore insidiously present in the user-generated social data streams that we absorb from our encounters with the web, and, in particular, with platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Recent observations of social media discussions of the Channel 4 documentary Benefits Street have, for instance, highlighted the high levels of antipathy, anger and abuse directed at the community portrayed within the programme. Fear may also be unwittingly, yet pervasively, propagated by the plethora of emerging digital apps, data and services that promise to improve our lives; for instance, the release of open crime data is meant to increase confidence in our law enforcement agencies, yet its actual effect is to increase fear of crime and, yet again, stigmatise communities. The focus of this project are the cultures of fear that are propagated through online Othering and how this leads to subsequent mistrust of groups or communities. Our research will generate an understanding of how the deliberate design of online media services and platforms can influence and oppose cultures of fear and result in cultures of empathy that can actively, and strategically, reduce or eliminate mistrust and negative consequences of Othering. We will actively collaborate with stakeholders to co-design new digital services that facilitate wide-scale empathy with specifically chosen often-Othered groups. This will include active collaboration with broadcast media organisations to develop a range of interactive, digital online experiences delivered alongside traditional media. We will also undertake online ethnographies and data collection, where prior or existing activities have portrayed a group in ways that actively provoke Othering as evidenced through discourse on social and traditional media; in this instance we will design and deliver a set of digital services to counter this in a deliberate manner.

Nature-based activities, and the subsequent interactions with wildlife, have been rapidly growing in popularity over the last three decades. Despite the well-being benefits associated with such activities, serious concerns have been raised for public health and animal welfare. The main issue is the increased risk associated with disease transmission when people are closely interacting with wildlife. However, to date, little is known about how people interact with different wildlife species, in particular birds, and how they perceive potential risks associated with such interactions, especially as the recent pandemic might have influenced people's perception of risks related to wildlife. As the majority of new diseases in humans are thought to be from wildlife origin, it is urgent that we better understand human-wildlife interactions and the perceived associated health risks. The aim of this research is to investigate the multifaceted interactions between humans and birds during current health crises associated with avian influenza and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. The project will broadly assess human-bird interactions. However, a part of the project will focus on mute swans (Cygnus olor), as this species spreads worldwide, and the public commonly interacts with them, making mute swans an ideal study model to understand human-bird interactions, and associated health risks. Over a four-year period, the research will use an interdisciplinary approach combining methods from psychology and disease ecology to: (1) explore people's attitudes and practices towards birds and the health-associated risks, including highly pathogenic avian influenza and anti-microbial resistant (AMR) bacteria; (2) investigate how social media might influence public perception of animal health and welfare, which might influence their health risk perception; (3) assess the potential health risks to humans of interacting with birds by measuring the prevalence of exposure to avian influenza and AMR bacteria in two swan populations with different levels of interactions with people; (4) develop consistent and evidence based-policy around human-bird interactions and health risks in the UK. The project will be conducted as part of the Lincoln Swan project, which is currently developing some collaborations with leading governmental and non-governmental organisations in public health and ornithology. These partnerships will be key in ensuring the success of the research and dissemination of the findings from which evidence-based policy will be developed. This research will have a major impact on our understanding of people's attitudes and practices towards wildlife, and birds in particular, and the health-associated risks, which will contribute to preventing and managing future outbreaks of zoonotic diseases.

The University of Lincoln aims to strengthen and widen the activities undertaken by its two science-based research centres: namely the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems Research (L-CAS) and the Medical Instrumentation Centre (MIC). Both centres have national and international reputations in their respective fields. L-CAS is closely integrated with the Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology (LIAT): a specialist research institute that aims to support and enhance productivity, efficiency and sustainability in food and farming; and our National Centre for Food Manufacturing with its strong food and related technology sector links and close academic partnership. The investment will provide novel facility namely the establishment of a state-of-the-art laboratory space with sensor suites, robots, motion tracking infrastructure, and computing facilities, supporting world-leading research at the intersection of AI, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics and application domains including Agri-Food and Healthcare. MIC is at the forefront of advanced diagnostic medical imaging systems having demonstrated the world's first solid-state proton CT system to enhance the treatment of cancer using Proton Beam Therapy. Investment in high test and measurement instruments will allow this international team to further the new medical imaging modality, namely charged-particle imaging.