Communing Data Literacy: Tools and Concepts for Social Engagement

Data increasingly forms the backbone of systems and processes that shape how we do things and how we relate to each other. Datafication – the uptake of data to reorganize social processes – is reshaping everything from loyalty programs and digital identification systems to credit card payments and rental pricing platforms. Artificial intelligence accelerates these processes. Making sense of what these changes mean for our everyday lives is no easy task. Datafied systems are highly technical and designed to be convenient and seamless; we tend to encounter them in brief moments of individualized transaction, which makes them difficult to see, let alone read, and their illegibility makes them very challenging to respond to. Communing Data Literacy offers a novel set of concepts and tools to help people make sense of how technology is altering their communities and their social interactions. Building on three years of design research by digital rights organizations in Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, the volume analyzes people’s everyday experiences with datafication, rethinking data from the perspective of community and offering practical techniques for community engagement. Communing Data Literacy pushes back against the individualism and technocentrism of Western data literacy practice and scholarship, providing English readers the opportunity to engage with Latin American perspectives.