Critical Data Practices in a MultiPandemic

This study investigates how youth from two cities in the US engage in critical data practices as they learn about and take action on COVID-19. Since March 2020, we have co-documented, with youth in the Midwest and the West Coast of the US, how people learn and make decisions in relation to COVID-19 in real time, and how this is shaped by justice-related concerns. Guided by theories of critical data literacies and data justice, a historicized and future-oriented participatory methodological approach is used to center the lived lives and communities of participants through dialogic interviews and experience sampling. Data were co-analyzed with participants using critical grounded theory. Findings illustrate how youth not only aimed to reveal the dynamic and human aspects of and relationships with data as they engage with/in the world as people who matter, but also offered alternative infrastructures for counter data production and aggregation towards justice in the here-and-now and possible futures. Implications for studies of learning with/through data practices in everyday life in relation to issues of justice are discussed.<br><br>