2024 | Book

Digital Literacy and Inclusion

Stories, Platforms, Communities

Editor: Danica Radovanović

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Part of: Springer Professional "Business + Economics & Engineering + Technology" , Springer Professional "Engineering + Technology" , Springer Professional "Business + Economics"

Table of Contents

About this book

Amid the opportunities and challenges we face at the dawn of the fifth industrial revolution, Digital Literacy and Inclusion presents a carefully curated selection of case studies, theories, research, and best practices based on digital literacy as a prerequisite for effective digital inclusion.

More than a dozen experts provide deep insights in stories, research reports, and geographical studies of digital literacy and inclusion models, all from a multi-disciplinary perspective that includes engineering, social sciences, and education. Digital Literacy and Inclusion also highlights a showcase of real-world digital literacy initiatives that have been adopted by communities of practice around the globe.

Contributors explore myriad aspects and modalities of digital literacy: digital skills related to creativity, urban data literacy, digital citizenship skills, digital literacy in education, connectivity literacy, online safety skills, problem-solving and critical-thinking digital skills, data literacy skills, mobile digital literacy, algorithmic digital skills, digital health skills, etc. They share the principles and techniques behind successful initiatives and examine the dynamics and structures that enable communities to achieve digital literacy efficiently and sustainably. Their practical solutions, propositions, and findings provide theoretically grounded and evidence-based facts that inform interventions intended to ensure that all citizens have and can enhance their digital literacy while meaningfully and responsibly participating in the digital economy and society.

The ideas and histories in this book will appeal to scholars and researchers in the social sciences, engineering, education, sustainable digital technologies, and transformation, and will also be of interest to practitioners in industry, policy, and government.

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Rethinking Digital Literacy

Abstract

It is more than ever relevant to address the present digital transformation challenges in society to understand, regenerate, renew, and strive in the (digital)future. In the current digital landscape, the revolution and revelation are in the online sphere: online work, online socialization, online learning, e-commerce, e-government, and all that on the remote. In this landscape, digital literacy plays a crucial empowering and enabling role. This conceptual essay explores an ongoing dialectic of socio-technological participation in the online world and the gaps that hinder participation, and provides an overview of Digital Literacy and Inclusion: Stories, Platforms, Communities. Digital literacy and digital inclusion are explored through the theoretical and practical implications, digital literacy textures through the filter of education, and convergent practices that showcase the digital literacy initiatives applied through communities of practice around the globe. As we are witnessing the emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, and augmented reality, their growth raises important questions about our current legal systems, policies, and advocacy strategies and how they can mitigate the human rights risks that may be affected by these technologies. Technology needs to help us make better decisions and improve our livelihoods, especially in the other half of the world that is not connected to the internet. The book addresses important nuances and raises salient issues.

Danica Radovanović

Digital Literacy Theory Implications

Frontmatter

Chapter 2. From Skilled Users to Critical Citizens? Imagining and Future-Making as Part of Digital Citizenship

Abstract

The profound digitalization of everyday environments and the deep social, political, and economic implications of this development mean there is an urgent need for not just advancing but rethinking digital citizenship, as well as reconsidering different actors’ roles within this new order. In many societies, digital literacy already determines individuals’ possibilities to effectively function as a part of society: everyday life actions such as accessing health services and using public transport are dependent on digital literacy. However, this is just one level of the ongoing transformation. More broadly, digital technology is deeply woven into everyday practices, social interactions, cultural experiences, economic transactions, and political decision-making (Manovich 2013; Williamson 2014). This results in that digital literacy, understood mainly as a set of adequate skills that help in navigating digitalized everyday environments, needs to be accompanied by notions of broader critical awareness of technologies’ role in society. In this chapter, we explore one facet of this critical awareness: how the notion of digital citizenship could be complemented and expanded to include an ability to imagine alternative future trajectories.

Johanna Ylipulli, Minna Vigren

Chapter 3. Sensing the City: A Creative Data Literacy Perspective

Abstract

The image of a smart city comes with the impression of an intelligent digital place (Albino V, Berardi U, Dangelico RM, J Urban Technol, 22(1), 3–21, 2015; Karvonen A, Cugurullo F, Caprotti F (eds), Inside smart cities: place, politics and urban innovation. Routledge, 2018). From a citizen perspective it brings about the need for a literacy that can navigate the manifold kinds of data surrounding us in everyday city life (Cowley R, Joss S, Dayot Y, Urban Res Pract, 11(1), 53–77, 2018), understand their potential effects, and make informed choices in relation to data (Kunze J, Geoforum Perspektiv 19(35). https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.perspektiv.v19i35.6423, 2020). Focusing on experiences from a series of workshops in a midsize city in Germany, this chapter argues for the inclusion of making and crafting as alternate methods for urban data literacy. These, we show, can be a means to bring unseen city life dimensions to the fore, and to include young inhabitants, as well as those whose access to the digital sphere is challenged, to the discourse on data and its implications for everyday city life, planning, and design. As a workshop outcome a city of sound was crafted from wood. Equipped with programmable micro-boards this wooden artifact was used to assemble collected audio files about certain aspects of city life. Upon touch, these sounds could be reproduced in a certain manner from predefined spots on the city artifact. The possibility to remix the sounds created a basis for discussion about abstract concepts of city life such as religion and nature. The tactile and artistic approach to data and its meaning in the city enables their discussion across communities. It can be a creative means to add to the data-basis used to legitimize urban design choices.

Anne Weibert, Maximilian Krüger

Chapter 4. Scanning for Scams: Local, Supra-national, and Global Events as Salient Contexts for Online Fraud

Abstract

This chapter uses the mazephishing framework to explain how digital and media literacy instruction can benefit from observing the way in which salient social circumstances create a fertile ground for disseminating online scams. The mazephishing framework comprises three primary components: the social context from which specific scam messages obtain their salience, the media or channels used to circulate the scam messages and the influencing techniques employed in the actual scam messages. The chapter presents three real-life examples for different levels of salient contexts, i.e., local, supra-national and global contexts: the tax season in Estonia and the United States as an enabler of related online scams, supra-national level commercial events, i.e., Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday, as well as the global microchip shortage that drives international gaming console scams.

The mazephishing framework acknowledges that not all events are of equal importance for different societies around the world, and that even global events are lived and experienced differently across the globe. Thus, the framework provides digital and media literacy instructors with a useful tool and a set of principles for analysing how events occurring on different scales are used as context for exploiting scam recipients’ vulnerabilities.

Kristjan Kikerpill

Chapter 5. How Southeast Asia Can Better Arrange and Deliver Internet Policies So as to Defy the Digital Divide

Abstract

In this chapter, the digital growth of the Southeast Asia (SEA) region was conceptually explored, and we provided a systematic overview and analysis of how countries digitally harness and maximise the benefits of online platforms. Then, we discuss how the digital divide, marginalisation, and exclusion as processes, continue to be ingrained in the region, urging a need for intra- and inter-countries’ inclusive responses to e-development. Last, we raise some concerns over digital transformation and explore how different SEA parties can respond to these risks.

Jason Hung

Digital Literacy Textures and Education

Frontmatter

Chapter 6. The Digital Divide and Higher Education

Abstract

If digital fluency is enhanced by immersive digital experiences, the pivot to online learning during COVID should lead to increased levels of digital fluency. However, there is evidence COVID has broadened the digital divide in education. Pre-pandemic, a digital divide predicated on differing digital skills and usage patterns was emerging in the Australian higher education sector. Many students from underprivileged backgrounds entering university were grappling with the necessary digital skills required to participate in a digital learning setting.

Conceptualising the growing inequalities arising from a widening digital divide, this chapter investigates the impacts of a digital divide on the university student experience. Using a quantitative approach, the chapter provides an analysis of the digital divide in Australian higher education. About 409 first-year business students were surveyed at regional and urban Australian universities. Empirical data is examined using descriptive analysis, Pearson’s Chi-Square, Cramer’s V test, and ANOVAs to determine the relationship between the students’ self-reported digital skills, prior digital experience, and preparedness for university study with access to digital resources, demographic factors, and geographic location.

The chapter highlights the key differences in how school influences, digital experiences, and access to digital technologies influence digital fluency and preparedness for university study.

Students who were immersed in digital learning environments during secondary schooling were more likely to be digitally fluent and self-report preparedness for university study. Disadvantage indicators, prior digital experience, and digital fluency are examined to provide an insight into the new barrier in higher education, the digital learning environment.

Kerry Russo, Nicholas Emtage

Chapter 7. Students’ Use of Social Media and Critical Thinking: The Mediating Effect of Engagement

Abstract

The aim of this book chapter is to empirically explore the mediating role of students’ social media engagement and their ability to think critically. To achieve the aim of the study, we designed a Google Form online survey with questions related to (1) the use of social media, (2) engagement, and (3) critical thinking by the deployment of digital literacy skills. We collected data using convenience sampling techniques. Sixty-seven undergraduate Architecture and Civil engineering students from Tecnologico de Monterrey, Puebla Campus of Mexico volunteered to participate in the study. After data collection, we applied a mediation test by using the “medmod” module of Jamovi software. Results from the data analysis support all proposed hypotheses and also affirm that engagement is partially mediated between the use of social media and the critical thinking skills of undergraduate Architecture and Civil engineering students. Therefore, this study confirms that the use of social media-based course activities is helpful for university students to engage with other peers by deploying digital literacy skills to analyze, share, and communicate relevant information and knowledge about specific topics within the relevant course structure.

Asad Abbas, Talia Gonzalez-Cacho, Danica Radovanović, Ahsan Ali, Guillermina Benavides Rincón

Chapter 8. Tales of Visibility in TikTok: The Algorithmic Imaginary and Digital Skills in Young Users

Abstract

TikTok’s algorithm (as well as many others) is not transparent to its users. Moreover, a user should be well aware of the algorithm’s logic to “train” it in order to show results out of the “niches” in which the platform tends to collocate its users and their contents. Therefore, also to gain visibility, or to elude the attentive scrutiny the algorithm performs, a user should develop technical knowledge. This chapter analyses the algorithmic practices enacted by young users (13–19) on TikTok, following the online ethnographic approach. This method enabled the authors to understand in-depth how young users (a) learn about the algorithm, (b) develop or employ digital skills which enable them to and (c) perform leverage tactics in response to the platform’s logic. These dimensions were then qualitatively assessed, to understand how peculiar digital skills (social interaction skills, content creation skills and ethical behaviour online) are employed in relation to the algorithmic imagery. The discussion takes place, within the chapter, through the analysis of three case studies: #traumatok, Breonna Taylor trend and teenagers’ practices on LIVE streaming.

Elisabetta Zurovac, Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Valeria Donato

Digital Literacy and Communities of Practice

Frontmatter

Chapter 9. Digital Literacy and Agricultural Extension in the Global South

Abstract

The agriculture sector in the Global South is undergoing profound changes because of digital transformation. There are concerns these efforts will advantage global agribusiness while marginalizing smallholders and disrupting long-established labour patterns and social relations, especially for women and youth. Nonetheless, digital technology also promises to help these farming communities to maintain their independence and enhance their livelihoods. Agriculture extension and advisory services (EAS) can play a role by supporting efforts to promote digital self-determination for farmers and other agriculture workers. However, EAS organizations need to develop digital literacy strategies that will empower smallholders to make informed choices about new ICTs and how they will be integrated into work practices and community life. In this chapter, we introduce and explain how an interactionist view on digital literacy can contribute to this objective when combined with a capabilities-centric approach to human development. The final section of the chapter includes examples of how these elements have been applied in an ongoing action research study and technology stewardship training programme involving EAS practitioners in Trinidad and Sri Lanka.

Gordon A. Gow, Uvasara Dissanayeke, Ataharul Chowdhury, Jeet Ramjattan

Chapter 10. Connectivity Literacy for Digital Inclusion in Rural Australia

Abstract

Low levels of digital inclusion present enduring challenges for rural Australian communities. Not only is there a historic lack of robust telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas, but rural people—including farmers—tend to have fewer digital literacies and skills to effectively use digital connections and technologies. We undertook a qualitative study in the State of Queensland in Australia that aimed to investigate underlying factors of low levels of digital inclusion in rural households and communities. We uncovered a set of essential skills for digital inclusion that did not fit neatly into the three-pillared digital inclusion framework we took into the study. While we did gather insights into farmers’ challenges associated with the pillars of access, affordability, and digital ability, we also observed how people were needing to acquire connectivity literacy (a concept originating from industry but not yet widely investigated by scholars) to achieve digital inclusion. In this chapter, we shed light on the complexities of getting connected and staying connected to telecommunications services in rural Australia. We describe connectivity literacy as being principally about being able to set up local hardware and networks, respond to technical outages when they occur, and navigate a complex consumer environment to ascertain the best connectivity options.

Amber Marshall, Rachel Hay, Allan Dale, Hurriyet Babacan, Michael Dezuanni

Chapter 11. Community Networks as Sustainable Infrastructure for Digital Skills

Abstract

Digital literacy has been on the agenda of different international bodies and governments during the last decades, especially in the Global South. Despite many efforts, low digital literacy is one of the main reasons for the current digital divide in developing countries. In Latin America, there is a combination of low scores in international education rankings combined with a constant increase in the adoption of digital technologies for communication. At the same time, countries from the region share a history of popular education as a model for teaching and learning media and communication. As a possible response to previously presented challenges and opportunities, this chapter focuses if and how bottom-up solutions developed by local communities can offer a more suitable approach to overcoming the digital divide in areas with limited to no Internet connectivity and low digital literacy and economic income. To achieve this goal, three case studies were carried out with digital literacy projects in different rural contexts in Brazil and Mexico, created and run by the local communities. The analysis of the case studies showed that locally developed initiatives start from the community’s context and interests and can produce meaningful, practical educational tools and content. They play an essential role in offering capacity-building initiatives for communities living in unconnected and underserved areas for the benefit of increasing digital literacy. These initiatives are also cognizant of the socio-economic and cultural particularities of different populations, allowing them to embrace digital technologies within their own culture, combining oral tradition with new media environments.

Raquel Rennó, Juliana Novaes

Chapter 12. Digital Inclusion Interventions for Digital Skills Education: Evaluating the Outcomes in Semi-Urban Communities in South Africa

Abstract

In the South African government’s embrace of digital transformation, there has been a significant focus on the digital skills development of vulnerable and digitally excluded communities. Community organisations that have integrated digital inclusion offerings as part of their services have been instrumental in this regard, providing digital skills training and alternative learning options for people unable to afford traditional education institutions. Unfortunately, limited information is available as to the outcomes of such digital skills training interventions in the lives of the intended beneficiaries, as well as recommendations towards assessing such outcomes in under-resourced communities (URC). This chapter presents the findings of a quantitative survey study that sought to contribute to the practice of assessing the outcomes of digital skills training interventions. It provides insight into meaningful benefits derived by beneficiaries of a mobile (digital) literacy training course; salient factors contributing to such outcomes; and the application of methodological approaches and processes to evaluate the outcome of digital skills interventions in URC. It is envisaged that the evidence-based insight emerging from this study allows for a more nuanced understanding of meaningful outcomes that may transpire from digital inclusion interventions, and informs and encourages the practice of more effective digital skills intervention assessment, particularly in URC.

Natasha Katunga, Carlynn Keating, Leona Craffert, Leo Van Audenhove

Chapter 13. Digital Health Literacy—A Prerequisite Competency for the Health Workforce to Improve Health Indicators in Times of COVID: A Case Study from Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and its continuous waves have brought the entire world to a standstill. In response to the Coronavirus, digital technologies across the globe are being harnessed to support public health from identifying new cases, contact tracing, surveilling patients, and evaluation of interventions based on mobility data and communication with the public. Harnessing the use of digital technologies, digital health literacy (DHL) became an indispensable tool for the health workforce including frontline workers to provide primary health services in this pandemic. Having a digitally literate health workforce is an essential element for the success of establishing a health ecosystem.

The chapter analyses the case study of Uttar Pradesh, with population size of 200 million (Census of India, 2020) became the first state in India to develop an integrated and unified COVID-19 mobile platform for ensuring that every citizen of the state is tracked, tested, and treated across the continuum of care-bringing together all COVID health facilities, laboratories, state, district, and field staff onto a common platform. To achieve this, the chapter focuses on how digital health literacy has been imparted to 200,000 health officials and frontline workers spread across 75 districts and 59163 village councils of the state. This chapter further measures the complete spectrum of DHL 2.0 skills (Vaart and Drossaert, J Med Internet Res 19: e27, 2017) from searching, selecting, appraising, and applying online health information and healthcare services provided at different healthcare facilities. The chapter aims to establish digital health literacy as a prerequisite requirement for health professionals and workforce for effective delivery of healthcare services specifically in public health sector. The chapter argues that digital health literacy skills are mandatory to ensure how health workforce and practitioners can integrate their knowledge and digital health literacy skills into optimal health behaviour.

Ritu Srivastava, Sushant Sonar

14. Correction to: How Southeast Asia Can Better Arrange and Deliver Internet Policies So as to Defy the Digital Divide

Jason Hung

Backmatter

Title: Digital Literacy and Inclusion
Editor: Danica Radovanović
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-30808-6
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-30807-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30808-6