Digital Literacy and Civic Engagement: Interview and Diary Data, 2018

Polizzi, Gianfranco (2025). Digital Literacy and Civic Engagement: Interview and Diary Data, 2018. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857773

ESRC-funded PhD work completed at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2020. Based on qualitative data collected from digital experts and civic advocates in the UK, this work explored the intersection of digital literacy and civic engagement.

Data description (abstract)

This thesis explores the intersection of digital literacy and civic engagement. To do so, it conceptualizes digital literacy as functional and critical skills and knowledge about the internet that are contextually situated. Drawing on utopian studies and political theory, it conceptualizes critical digital literacy, in particular, as incorporating users’ utopian/dystopian imaginaries of society in the digital age. Such an approach prescribes that critical digital literacy relies on understanding both the potentials and the limitations of the internet for civic life. I argue that applying utopianism/dystopianism to critical digital literacy enables us to disentangle users’ imaginaries of the internet from their imaginaries of civic life, which align with different ideologies. With this novel approach to digital literacy in mind, this study focuses on digital experts (e.g., information, IT and media professionals) and civic advocates (e.g., community councillors, political party candidates, activists) in the United Kingdom to address whether and how civic engagement provides opportunities for learning digital literacy, and whether and how the latter, in turn, facilitates civic engagement. To answer these questions, I employ a mixed qualitative methodology, using semi-structured interviews, enhanced by think aloud and diary methods, followed by thematic analysis, enhanced by elements of critical discourse analysis. While media literacy research has subordinated functional to critical digital literacy, my fieldwork revealed that the latter can only be sophisticated provided it relies on functional digital literacy. Furthermore, this study found that civic engagement, from reading news and discussing politics to campaigning, provides opportunities for learning digital literacy both informally through social interaction, information seeking and experience of using digital technologies, and formally through digital training. In turn, digital literacy facilitates civic engagement in ways that are instrumental, trustful and strategic. More specifically, digital literacy enables both experts and advocates to use digital technologies as practical tools for civic purposes. It enhances their trust in accredited media outlets while overcoming distrust in internet corporations. Finally, it enables them to strategically overcome bias, misinformation and their own privacy concerns as well as to navigate the internet’s civic potentials and limitations. On the basis of how experts and advocates understand the digital environment and engage in civic life, I argue that constructing both utopian and dystopian imaginaries of the internet, but deploying one or the other, makes civic engagement contradictory. By contrast, deploying utopian and dystopian imaginaries is crucial to pursuing civic opportunities online while overcoming the limitations of the digital environment.

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