Data infrastructure literacy

Abstract

A recent report from the UN makes the case for ''global data literacy'' in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the ''data revolution''. Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, intervene around and participate in the wider socio-technical infrastructures through which data is created, stored and analysed -which we call ''data infrastructure literacy''. We illustrate this notion with examples of ''inventive data practice'' from previous and ongoing research on open data, online platforms, data journalism and data activism. Drawing on these perspectives, we argue that data literacy initiatives might cultivate sensibilities not only for data science but also for data sociology, data politics as well as wider public engagement with digital data infrastructures. The proposed notion of data infrastructure literacy is intended to make space for collective inquiry, experimentation, imagination and intervention around data in educational programmes and beyond, including how data infrastructures can be challenged, contested, reshaped and repurposed to align with interests and publics other than those originally intended.

The power of relation-making: insights into the production and operation of digital school performance platforms in the US

“…Instead, topological thinking puts equal emphasis on the question of how continuous change (with is clearly visible in the dynamics of platformization) and enduring relations as practices can be thought of together (Martin & Secor, 2014, p. 422). Consequently, when researching platforms through a topological lens, it seems important to trace both the stabilization of platforms as relational settings and the highly dynamic and ambivalent or contested practices of platform (re)production and usage, which may also include significant elements of 'messing around' or 'trial and error' as well as the contestation of ethical, political and technical logics (see also Gray et al, 2018;Kitchin et al, 2015, p. 16;Williamson, 2015;Hartong & Förschler, 2019). As topological thinking suggests, the interesting question then is which relations remain or what stays 'typical' even though changes occur (Decuypere & Simons, 2016), including, for example, the various 'paths' a user may take on a (customized or interactive) platform.…”

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

“…By using specific and locally owned, generated and maintained technical systems, the project strives for digital sovereignty and counters the abstract digital spaces and proprietary infrastructures of neoliberal smart cities [2]. Likewise, however, as discussed in the subsection on Designing for Care, citizens will need technical skills and data literacy [31,74] in order to own and self-govern the digital commons, for which the study raises issues of barriers to participation and access. There was limited engagement from guardians and other participants with the sensor data.…”

Data witnessing: attending to injustice with data in Amnesty International’s Decoders project

“…Data was gathered from official reports and photographs, which were used to quantify inaction and explore inconsistencies in official accounts. The project thereby inventively repurposed existing reporting mechanisms (Gray, Gerlitz, & Bounegru, 2018) to challenge and provide alternatives to 'modes of authorised seeing' (Jasanoff, 2017) and to attend to the destruction of environments undergirding the lives of people in affected regions. Amnesty began its Niger Delta work in the 1990s around the time of disappearances, extrajudicial killings and executions of protestors such as writer-activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.…”