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Professor Simeon YatesUniversity of Liverpool
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Dr Eleanor LockleySheffield Hallam University
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Professor Bridgette WesselsUniversity of Glasgow
Project overview
This project investigates citizens’ understanding of how the data they share via digital platforms are used by industry, government and the third sector, and how this varies among different demographic groups in the population. The findings will inform the development of a suite of training and support materials, as well as recommendations for policymakers and other stakeholders on how to improve citizens’ data literacy.
The project builds on the team’s ESRC-funded review of the evidence on how digital technology affects our lives and interacts with social change, entitled Ways of Being in a Digital Age. For this project, they are reviewing the academic and policy literature on data literacy, as well as information from a range of survey datasets, to inform the development of a new nationally representative survey. They aim to carry out face-to-face interviews with 1,800 individuals.
The Good Things Foundation, a charity that helps people improve their lives through digital technologies, will work with the project team to run a series of citizen workshops. Participants will be selected based on the key demographic differences in data literacy identified in the first stage of the project. Discussions will focus on exploration of participants’ data literacy, as well as any concerns they have about how their data is used.
The project complements the work of the Ada Lovelace Institute, which we founded in 2018.