Data Literacy - What is it and how can we make it happen?

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet and particularly Open Data, data literacy (the ability of non-specialists to make use of data) is rapidly becoming an essential life skill comparable to other types of literacy. However, it is still poorly defined and there is much to learn about how best to increase data literacy both amongst children and adults. This issue addresses both the definition of data literacy and current efforts on increasing and sustaining it. A feature of the issue is the range of contributors. While there are important contributions from the UK, Canada and other Western countries, these are complemented by several papers from the Global South where there is an emphasis on grounding data literacy in context and relating it the issues and concerns of communities.

Developing data capability with non-profit organisations using participatory methods

“…They gather people with a range of expertise to use data to develop 'data hacks' that might address social issues. Examples of 'citizen data science' approaches for improving data literacies might include open data jams, hackathons and workshops in public libraries (Frank et al, 2016). In these activities, groups of volunteer data scientists collectively engage in programming and data scoping or analysis efforts, suppling non-profit organisations with much-needed data science expertise and support data-driven decisions for civic issues (Pedersen and Caviglia, 2019).…”

“…As more domains of social life are transformed into computable data, the ability to understand and use data becomes essential for citizens, organisations and governments alike. Frank et al (2016) argue that a data literate citizen should have the ability to find, select, understand, interpret, evaluate and manipulate data in the context of the internet with confidence, and to appreciate the value of data. To their definition of data literacies as the ‘the ability to read, work with, analyse and argue with data’, D’lgnazio and Bhargava note important sensitivities in the era of big data including the need to understand algorithmic manipulations, and ability to weigh up consequences of data handling for already marginalised people (2015: 2).…”

“…Although the concept of data literacy remains contested, it is useful for grounding and understanding data practices in their communicative settings, in relation to data's representational (communicative) and functional (computational) status (Poirier, 2021). Theoretical and practical work on data literacy generally seeks to improve individual competencies and critical awareness (D’Ignazio and Bhargava, 2015; Frank et al, 2016) as an aspect of contemporary ‘data citizenship’ (Carmi and Yates, 2020) and shifting big data practices. However, it is not always clear where or how this work should take place, and burgeoning corporate data literacy programs (e.g.…”

One year of DALIDA Data Literacy Workshops for Adults: A Report

“…Yet, these skills are essential to assess and comprehend information presented in various media (such as on government portals, in newspapers, and on social media). Recent studies have shown that data literacy is still complex for most people [1]. The danger is that those people might be misinformed or misled, which may have dire consequences as those people may take ill-informed actions (e.g., voting).…”

“…In 2020, the COVID pandemic has shown the importance of data literacy. The US administration misrepresenting Belgium's mortality rate 1 and misleading insights gained from connecting cases to geospatial dimensions 2 are merely two examples. While we cannot prevent third parties from presenting data with a particular (political) agenda in mind, we can help the general public acquire an awareness of the skills necessary to think critically about data, its provenance, and its presentation.…”