Community-Driven Digital Literacy Work in Algorithmic Times
“Click to agree.” “Click to continue.” Is it possible to give meaningful consent on automated platforms? And what can be said of social rights when people must subscribe online to access food banks, housing, or healthcare? How are algorithms affecting the employment chances of entry level workers applying for jobs online? These questions guide the Automated Literacies project, led by Dr. Suzanne Smythe and Dr. Nathalie Sinclair, along with their team of graduate and postdoctoral researchers. The Automated Literacies project is a collaboration with the Burnaby Neighbourhood House and its community-based digital literacy program, with a focus on how automation and algorithms are transforming literacies and everyday lives.
This month’s issue of Education Research Matters highlights Faculty of Education Associate Professor Dr. Suzanne Smythe’s work in adult literacy and digital literacies, and how critical feminist and “more-than-human” theories have shaped her scholarship.
An associate professor in Adult Literacy and Adult Education in the Faculty of Education, Dr. Suzanne Smythe has been fortunate to collaborate with Rajeeta Samala, literacy outreach coordinator at the to offer the Digital Café, a digital literacy program for residents of Burnaby. The BNH is a community-based social agency that responds to the social, educational and economic needs of Burnaby residents. Their work has attracted SSHRC-funded research grants, and two $430,000 Digital Literacy Empowerment grants from the Federal Government to combine digital literacy research and education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the BNH was one of the few frontline social services agencies able to stay open to provide crucial support for the communities digital literacy needs.
Drs. Smythe and Sinclair, along with Drs. Gwénaëlle André and Sheree Rodney, work with Rajeeta Samala, and volunteer tutors and community members to trace the ways that automation such as online forms, verification protocols and algorithmic decision making are changing literacy practices and pedagogies. Since pedagogies are tied into social and material processes, they pay close attention to what people are doing online and what they want to learn, finding that even though government service and recruitment platforms claim that all ‘users’ are treated the same, there are subtle (and not so subtle) differences in people’s experiences. These are related to English language hegemony on the internet, the unequal access to computers and the internet for people with low incomes (most people who attend the café cannot afford internet at home), and also the kind of data that people are compelled to share. In the upcoming article Subscription literacies: The platforming of food insecurity, Rodney, Sinclair and Smythe show how Digital Café goers are compelled to disclose personal data in exchange for access to food banks, housing and jobs: often these efforts are not successful. This datafication of social rights is yet another avenue for social stratification and inequality, let alone for the right to privacy. Smythe and co-researchers are finding ways to work these insights into digital literacy approaches. According to the BNH this “timely support linked to careful research makes a world of difference” for people with limited digital access.
Meaningful consent is the focus of another article, “” (2023), which explores how digital literacy, particularly in community settings, is increasingly complicated by automation. Working the etymology of con-sent as “feeling-with” Drs. Smythe, André and Sinclair argue that consent is affective and relational but is treated as transactional. “We are (often) compelled,” they note, “to click-to-agree to privacy and data sharing policies we may not fully understand so that we can gain access to the service or resource we require.” Digital literacies are thus not about teaching people “how to” consent, but to embed a critique of this ontology to support awareness, if not resistance, to datafied logics.
Engaging “thinking-with-theory” and reflecting on their own in situ work in the Digital Café, the authors were also inspired to reflect on the ethics of gaining consent for their research. This involved the “con-sent” of building rapport and trust with participants, working against the logic of data extraction that can often drive university research, just as it does the “click to consent” logics of everyday platforms. In place of English-only, complex legalistic terms, that rush research participants through the consent form, the authors explored alternatives such as flexible pathways through data generation, so people can opt in and out of collaborative inquiries. They also explored methods of speculation and scenario-building to tell research stories without data collection. “It is possible,” they conclude, “to adjust the temporal and individualized logics of consent to attend more to recursivity, and to “feeling-with.”
Dr. Smythe’s research calls for different futures for digital literacy but also for adult education. In her article “” (2022), she argues that equitable and just futures for literacy and education requires dismantling the enduring ideal of “Universal Man”; this is the enlightenment view of the Man-as-human tied to the logics of colonialism, racism and capitalism. This figure has dominated adult education, and indeed most Western education institutions, and according to critical humanist scholar Sylvia Wynter, relies on accumulation and assumptions of (hu)man exceptionalism that is leading the world to ecological and social collapse” (p. 774).
Sylvia Wynter proposes that this world-threatening notion of (Human accumulation and exceptionalism be replaced by a “hybrid” ‘more than-humanness’ made of our biology and our stories. We must take care of the stories we tell, and the technologies, literacies, pedagogies and methodologies they make possible.
We invite you to watch the video The Digital Café: We All Have to Learn the Digital World, which provides additional context and perspectives related to this article.
References
Smythe, S. (2022). The Faure Report, Sylvia Wynter and the undoing of the man of lifelong learning. International Review of Education, 68, 773–789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-022-09980-8
Smythe, S., André, G., & Sinclair, N. (2023). Consent as “feeling-with”: Everyday automation and ontologies of consent in a community technology centre. Digital Culture & Education, 14(5), 64–82. https://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/volume-14-5