Slides for presentation at Data Literacy Workshop at Web Science 2015, 30th June 2015.

1. How is Data Made?
From Dataset Literacy to
Data Infrastructure Literacy
30th June, Web Science 2015, University of Oxford
Jonathan Gray | jonathangray.org | @jwyg

2. Some thoughts on data literacy
beyond the dataset.

3. Not just reading and using datasets.

4. Thinking critically and constructively
about their contexts of production.

5. Bigger picture: role of data in society.

6. Not just literacies to read and use datasets,
but literacies to read and shape data infrastructures.

7. What is data literacy?

8. What is data?

9. A metaphor.

10. Data and photography.

12. Jonathan Gray (2012) “What Data Can and Cannot Do”. The Guardian. Available at:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/31/data-journalism-focused-critical

13. Jonathan Gray (2012) “What Data Can and Cannot Do”. The Guardian. Available at:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/31/data-journalism-focused-critical

15. Early optimism about veracity
and fidelity of photography.

16. – Franklin v. State of Georgia, 69 Ga. 36; 1882 Ga
“We cannot conceive of a more impartial and truthful
witness than the sun, as its light stamps and seals the
similitude of the wound on the photograph put before
the jury; it would be more accurate than the memory of
witnesses, and as the object of all evidence is to show
truth, why should not this dumb witness show it?”

17. Critical literacy around photography.

18. Critical literacy to read images:
!
• How is the camera set up to take shots?
• What is captured and how?
• What is not captured?
• How does equipment mediate the image?
• Selection, framing, arrangement, post-
production?

19. Instead of the camera, the elaborate sprawl
of public information systems.

20. Data infrastructures as
socio-technical systems.

21. What do they measure or capture, and how?

22. But datasets are not photographs.

23. Specificities of data infrastructures.

24. Datasets are heterogeneous.

25. Datasets are generated by a mixture of social and
technical processes, including e.g.:
!
• Laws and policies
• Administrative protocols
• Registration procedures
• Instruments and equipment
• Software systems
• Financial audits
• Feedback systems
• Management systems
• Metadata from digital services
• Standards bodies/standardisation procedures

26. Data literacy is not just about
knowing how to use data analysis software
or understanding statistics..

27. But also understanding methods, rationales,
assumptions, definitions, technologies, institutions,
through which datasets were generated.

28. Democratising the data revolution.

29. Not just liberalising access to the
informational by-products of public institutions.

30. But also bringing data infrastructures back
into realm of democratic political life.

31. Recent examples.

32. 1. Beneficial ownership advocacy.
2. “Statactivism” and counting the uncounted.

33. 1. Beneficial ownership advocacy."
2. “Statactivism” and counting the uncounted.

34. Gray. J. & Davies, T. (2015) “Fighting Phantom Firms in the UK: From Opening Up Datasets to
Reshaping Data Infrastructures?”. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2610937

35. In case of campaigning around company ownership,
the disclosure of existing datasets was not enough.

36. Civil society organisations had to undertake a more
creative, sustained and holistic engagement with
shaping and influencing the development of data
infrastructures as socio-technical systems.

37. This included research and advocacy around:
!
• Costs, functionalities and user interfaces of
software systems that would run the register;
• Changes to primary and secondary legislation;
• Additional administrative requirements and their
impacts on different actors inside and outside the
public sector.

38. Campaigners had to look beyond the question
of what information is released, towards the
question of what information is collected and
generated by the public sector in the first place,
how this is information is generated through
data infrastructures.

39. 1. Beneficial ownership advocacy.
2. “Statactivism” and counting the uncounted.

40. 1. Beneficial ownership advocacy.
2. “Statactivism” and counting the uncounted.

41. “Statactivism”

42. Bruno, I. and Didier, E. and Vitale, T. (2014) “Statactivism: Forms of Action between Disclosure
and Affirmation”. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2466882

43. Not just blanket critique or withdrawal of
quantification and “metrification”.

44. Highlighting limitations of existing forms of
measurement and proposing alternatives.

45. For example, gender equality, climate
change, working conditions and health.

46. What should be measured and how?

47. What is not currently being measured?

48. Recent examples from data journalism.

51. New “action repertoires” for civil society actors
to shape data infrastructures.

52. To what extent do data infrastructures address
needs and interests of civil society actors?

53. How to broaden the publics that
shape data as well as the publics that use it?

54. Legal, social and technical measures for
making open data initiatives more
responsive to concerns of civil society?

55. ROUTE TO PA:
http://routetopa.eu

56. DEMOCRATISING
PUBLIC INFORMATION:
FROM OPENING UP DATASETS TO
RESHAPING DATA INFRASTRUCTURES?
JONATHAN GRAY
JULY 2015

57. Question of what is measured and how.

58. But also who uses information,
and how information acts.

59. From “information as resource” to
“information as agent”.
!
(Sandra Braman, Change of State,
MIT Press, 2009)

60. “Participatory data infrastructures”

61. In conclusion…

62. Going beyond focus on literacy with datasets,
towards literacy with data infrastructures
through which they are generated.

63. Role of data infrastructures in addressing
global challenges - from climate change
to tax base erosion.

64. Data infrastructures as crucial part of
democratic politics in 21st century.

65. Jonathan Gray | jonathangray.org | @jwyg