Overview

“Understanding data” is a crucial literacy domain for helping students develop the critical, ethical, and rhetorical impulses needed to define data; understand its complicated relations to power, privilege, oppression, and liberation; and imagine ethical and responsible ways of working and advocating with data toward more just futures.

The resources offered under this literacy domain push students to ask critical questions about data such as:

What is “data”?
How and why does data ethically matter?
What critical habits toward data are important to develop?
What rhetorical dimensions of data need to be considered?
What is data advocacy? And how can we think rhetorically about data advocacy and do data advocacy ethically and responsibly?

Defining Data

Resources for this literacy domain offers students opportunities to explore what data is from a variety of disciplinary and professional perspectives. Students are especially encouraged to explore the important links between data, contexts, people, organizations, and power.

Sample Toolkit Resources

Interview with Catherine D’Ignazio: 'Data is Never a Raw, Truthful Input – and It is Never Neutral'

Resource Type: Reading

In this interview, the co-author of Data Feminism identifies how how sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination manifest in data products and emphasizes, among other things, the importance of recognising discrimination in algorithms, understanding how it operates on a technical level, and designing measures to stamp it out.

Introduction to Data, Data Harms, and Data Advocacy

Resource Type: Lesson Plan

During this two-day lesson plan, students will consider different conceptions of data and learn that while data can and often does do harm, data can also be leveraged for social good through data advocacy.

What is Data? (slide deck)

Resource Type: Slides

This Google Slides presentation, in PDF form, presents conceptions of data from different perspectives, sources, and fields of inquiry.

Critiquing Data

Resources for this literacy domain introduce students to critical data studies, data feminism, and other critical frameworks for interrogating how data yields power in various contexts and who benefits and does not benefit from such data use. In addition to these frameworks, resources in this literacy domain offer readings, activities, and assignments to help students hone their critical abilities to evaluate existing data sets, examples of data advocacy, and real-world scenarios concerning data ethics.

Sample Toolkit Resources

Critical Data Studies: An Introduction

Resource Type: Reading

In this scholarly essay, the authors identify the relations between data and power and, among other things, briefly describe the framework of Critical Data Studies, its orientations, and principles.

Dataset Documentation Assignment

Resource Type: Assignment

This assignment asks students to find a dataset to document and then leads them through a multi-step process of critical engagement with that dataset. The ultimate product is a set of documentation that is not merely technical but also critical and deeply contextual

The Limits of Data

Resource Type: Reading

In this opinion piece for Issues in Science and Technology, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that data creation is a process of decontextualization. Nguyen also explains the politics of classification and metrics and ultimately calls for a critical approach to data. This article provides an excellent introduction to critical data studies, although it does not use that term.

Acting Ethically with Data

Resources for this literacy domain introduce students to data ethics in order to help students better understand the significance of transparency, accountability, agency, and privacy, among other matters, when working with data.

Sample Toolkit Resources

An Introduction to Data Ethics

Resource Type: Reading

This reading, divided into five parts, introduces students to the ethics of data practice and includes discussions about data benefits and harms; challenges and obligations of ethical data practice; and ethical frameworks and best practices for data practitioners.

Data Ethics

Resource Type: Term

Data ethics refers to the moral obligations one has to responsibly collect, process, and share data as well as the undergirding principles one should consider when working with data throughout its entire lifecycle.

Data, Ethics, and Society

Resource Type: Reading

This section of the open access book, Making Sense of Digital Humanities, offers a variety of readings that discuss ethical concerns related to data, technology, and communities. Themes include but are not limited to: data and race, data and discrimination, algorithms and oppression, and coded biases.

Thinking Rhetorically about Data

This literacy domain introduces students to the art of rhetoric and the practice of data advocacy. Resources include an overview of rhetorical data studies and an explanation of how this approach can not only help students deepen their understanding about data but also assist their doing of data advocacy in ethical, persuasive, and just ways. Examples of data advocacy projects, delivered in multiple and diverse genres, are also included.

Sample Toolkit Resources

A Rhetorical Data Studies Approach to Data Advocacy

Resource Type: Reading

In this whitepaper crafted for Data Advocacy for All, data advocacy is defined and explained as a deeply rhetorical and ethical action while rhetorical data studies is forwarded as a critical and constructive framework for helping students learn how to ethically collect, process, and deploy data alongside narratives and other rhetorical strategies.

Introduction to Rhetorical Data Studies

Resource Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan introduces students to rhetorical data studies to help deepen their understanding of how this critical and productive framework can be useful for analyzing and generating data advocacy projects. During this lesson plan, students have opportunities to review key concepts related to rhetorical data studies, explore the rhetorical dimensions of data and data advocacy, and consider best practices and possible roadmaps for doing data advocacy.

Swastika Counter Project

Resource Type: Example Project

The Swastika Counter Project is a public humanities project that aims to educate the general public about the targets, circulation, and intensity of antisemitic signs on the streets of the United States. To support community stakeholders, this data advocacy website aims to provide reliable data, relevant research findings, and useful educational resources.