Since March 2019, I have been working as a postdoc at ‘Me and My Big Data’ project (I talk about my experience and critical reflections on data literacy and Data Citizenship framework here). In February 2020, our team published a report on UK's citizen's data literacy "Understanding citizens' data literacies: thinking, doing & participating with our data".
About Me and My Big Data
Me and My Big Data is a Nuffield Foundation funded collaborative research project between the University of Liverpool, Glasgow University, and Sheffield Hallam University, in collaboration with Good Things Foundation. This project seeks to understand the levels of and variations in UK citizens' data literacy and develop policy and educational materials to support improving this.
The Report
The preliminary analysis presented in our report is based on a nationally representative survey of UK citizen data literacy carried out during August - September 2019, by ‘Me and My Big Data’. These are initial results based on the teams first assessment of the survey data. Percentile response rates to survey questions are accurate and weighted to ensure representativeness. The identification of Digital User types follows a methodology previously established and published by team members. The scoring of users across the three dimensions of Data Citizenship is a novel approach under development by the team. The team will be undertaking further work to test the robustness of these measures. The scores across user types should therefore be taken as indicative rather than definitive. Though they are in strong correspondence with the theoretical expectations of the team.
Digital media ‘user types’
We have built on prior research to identify 6 types of digital technology users based on the activity they undertake online. The first of these groups form the focus of this report:
1. Extensive Political Users (10% of users) – High probability of engaging in all forms of digital media use – including political action and communication
2. Extensive Users (20% of users) – High probability of engaging in all forms of digital media use – except political action and communication
3. Social and Media Users (17% of users)– High likelihood of engaging with social media (Social Networking Sites) and entertainment media (e.g. Netfl ix and YouTube)
4. General Users (no social media) (31% of users) – Lower likelihoods of engaging in most digital media forms but not SNS
5. Limited Users (22% of users) – Limited engagement with all forms of digital media
6. Non-users – Currently non-internet users
For more details on the methods see note and www.bit.ly/meandmybigdata.
We hope that these initial findings will be useful to both academic and policy colleagues and provide a basis for further discussion, critique and engagement. The team welcomes any thoughts or comments on the results or methods so as to help develop the project and enhance the findings.
Me & My Big Data team:
Professor Simeon Yates (University of Liverpool)
Dr. Elinor Carmi (University of Liverpool)
Dr. Alicja Pawluczuk (University of Liverpool)
Dr. Eleanor Lockley (Sheffield Hallam University)
Professor Bridgette Wessels (University of Glasgow)
Dr. Justine Gangneux (University of Glasgow)