Open Privacy Badges for Digital Policy Literacy

Abstract

Previous work on digital policy literacy in relation to youth and privacy highlights that youth need to comprehend policy processes, the political economy of media systems, and sociotechnical infrastructures. Understanding in these domains is necessary for youth to negotiate both their social and informational privacy and to engage with the terms of service of the platforms they regularly use. In this article, we examine the digital policy literacy implications of a codesign project with eight teenagers whose goals were to create prototype-level open badges relevant to digital privacy in the Canadian context. We argue that codesign, informed by the culture of open source software, empowerment approaches to privacy education, and connected learning can provide new avenues to enhance digital policy literacy among youth.