Why is it Important to Support, Develop, and Teach Digital Literacy?

A simple reason for supporting citizens to develop data literacy could be that it is a good thing in and of itself and therefore worth doing! However, let us delve further and explore why it is important to develop democratic education or interventions to support data literacy and citizenship.

A cynical position might ask why we need to teach Data Literacy? If people are happy using digital media and systems and not worried out their data – why do they need to know more? As the saying goes, “no harm – no foul”.  Sadly, it is clear there is harm. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is just one case that many people believe caused harm

Resources link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal

1. Data Literacy and Citizenship

The academic writers Isin and Ruppert argue that being a digital citizen is about the ability to make “digital rights claims”.  This means having enough understanding to assert political and consumer rights claims over how digital media and systems work, how they use data, as well as how they are owned, managed, and regulated. (Isin, E., Ruppert, E. (2020). Being digital citizens. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.)

Whether we view data and digital citizenship more broadly, as an ability to engage in digital life, or more specifically, as an ability to make rights claims, citizens need to have both Data and Digital Literacy as well as broader critical skills. Basic Data and Digital literacy skills might include accessing online information, contributing to online debates, or managing privacy settings. The critical skills include digital citizens’ abilities to analyse, understand, and respond to the socio-economic dynamics of the digital world and their possible impact on society (e.g. digital inequalities, surveillance). Therefore, digital citizenship might be viewed as an evolving, proactive process of social engagement, negotiations and challenges to the way civic action is enacted in a digital society.

We would argue that there is a widening of the divide and power imbalance between data subjects (citizens) and data processors (big tech). Data processors, being those who own and manage data subject’s data, can, as a result, capitalise on this widening divide.

The big data divide has an impact not only on citizens’ self-awareness, but their entire web of interactions within society. Importantly, unlike common beliefs that this divide only applies to people who use the Internet, research suggests that even those who do not use the Internet or specific platforms are also subject to profiling.

It is therefore important that the conceptualisation of Data Literacy includes the capacity for citizens to question, assess, challenge, and make rights claims within a ‘datafied’ society.

2. Democratic education and Data Citizenship

There’s an argument to be had regarding digital and data literacy needing to be more than “basic digital skills”, due to a need to combine these with broader critical thinking and knowledge about the digital eco systems in which citizens are now effectively forced to operate.

It is therefore important to discuss the ideas of “democratic education”. Democratic education aims to equip citizens with skills and knowledge which enable them to exercise their citizenship. A Democratic educators’ objective is to empower citizens to critically examine their positions within the existing power structures in society, and to develop skills and understanding to take an active stand in the process of their individual and collective self-determination.

The parallels between teaching critical consciousness and data literacies education have been outlined by Tygel and Kirsch, who proposed that data-centred democratic education should aim to enhance citizen’s critical comprehension of data realities and encourage them to question the existing data-society norms (Tygel, A., & Kirsch, R. (2015). Contributions of Paulo Freire for a critical data literacy. In Proceedings of Web Science 2015 Workshop on Data Literacy (pp. 318-34).

The goal is to support citizens to think critically and carefully about what currently happens to their data and the data produced by their community but also to think critically about what “should” happen to that data, what they think is right and not just regarding the use and sharing of data in contemporary society.