A Summer Forging Connections Between Civic Tech, Digital Literacy, and Democracy

The summer fellowship had two projects: attending an international civic technology conference, and designing a workshop on open data literacy for social work students. In June, I attended The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC) in Mechelen, Belgium. Participants included activists, policy practitioners, technologists, and academics, often grappling with the hard problem of measuring impacts of their efforts. Organized by the UK-based NGO MySociety, TICTeC started in 2015. This year’s conference grappled with emerging support for authoritarianism among Big Tech. Its theme, defending and expanding pro-democracy technologies, was invigorating given the democratic backsliding currently occurring around the world. I met participants from Kenya, Taiwan, South Africa, Thailand, Taiwan, and across Europe – as well as fellow Americans behind projects like Civic Tech Field Guide, Polis, and Indivisible. I was there to observe, assess the landscape, and listen for how participants conceptualized the relationship between digital literacies and civic tech. Knowledge, skills, and capacity for critical reflection on digital social infrastructures was essential to the worldview promulgated in this space and its community. Inoculation against what Lee Vinsel calls criti-hype (perpetuation of industry, investor, and technophile hype through criticism) was palpable. TICTeC’s skeptical, yet hopeful, attitude aligned with a view of digital literacies encompassing both meaningful use of technology and capacity for critical reflection. The conference recordings are available here. 

This summer, I also designed and piloted a workshop focused on open government data literacy for human service workers, addressing functional and critical dimensions. After consulting with staff at the NYC civic tech organization BetaNYC and attending several of their events and workshops, I crafted a prototype workshop for MSW students enrolled in a course focused on homelessness and social policy. My proposal originally included an interactive module on the DHRIFT platform (developed by Graduate Center Digital Initiatives). However, the platform’s NEH grant was abruptly canceled earlier this year, so I used Google Slides for this iteration. I adapted materials from existing Discovering Open Data workshops on 311, incorporating literature on data justice, spatial justice, and complaint-oriented policing as prompts for critical reflection. In the pilot, it was fascinating learning students’ perspectives on both ends of the 311 infrastructure, as both complainants and respondents to calls. I plan to revise the workshop in the fall, incorporate it into my research, and publish a revised version.