Data Wellness and Everyday Life Data Literacy

This short paper proposes a framework for data literacy for the general public by reconceptualizing everyday life data literacy as data wellness. Data wellness is the application of basic data literacy and data citizenship to improve one’s everyday life as an individual, family, or other everyday life group member and citizen. Data literacy is a foundational infrastructure need in an economically resilient society, and data citizenship provides people with “critical and active agency,” returning power to those who have traditionally lacked it. The literacies of data wellness are multiple and inter-connected, both supporting data practices and drawing on them. The framework of data wellness integrally involves learners in data activities that are a part of their lived experiences. As such, data wellness is one key to a resilient society. This holds important implications for the role of public libraries as essential infrastructure to support data wellness initiatives.