Data Literacy Development Principles for Individuals and Communities

From our research, we developed seven principles for developing interventions to support citizens Data Literacy.

Any educational intervention, awareness raising, or community engagement must:

1. Ensure citizens feel more empowered and have practical and alternative routes to enact that empowerment.

• Don’t just make people scared of using digital media and systems – help them feel empowered to deal with them.

2. Consider the design and practical challenges citizens face in managing and controlling the data they share or “give off” whilst also being actively involved with others via the plethora of platforms in our digital society.

• Citizens can’t just “stop using Facebook” – help them manage the risks and benefits.

3. Make clear to citizens their rights – as citizens not just consumers – to make claims in regard to data use, sharing and trading and also of digital systems and platforms.

• Remind them that they have rights under GDPR and that they can complain, flag up social media content, disable adverts on systems, etc.

 

4. ‘Meet citizens where they are’ in terms of their digital and social experience and context.

• Know your audience

5. Address the challenge that those adults most in need of support are very likely outside formal educational settings.

• People in education or who have had post-18 education are the least in need. Though everyone needs to improve their Data Literacy.

6. Support skills development but must be more than skills, encompassing key elements of Data Participation.

• Don’t just focus on skills – in fact there is lots of help out there for skills – it is the critical awareness and proactive citizenship that are missing in most training and support.

7. Seek to provide deep critical consciousness the power relationships in our ‘datafied’ society and support them to exercise their right to challenge this imbalance and demand change.

• The goal has to be empowered digital citizens with good Data Literacy