How Do People Reason With COVID-19 Data? Schooled and Folk Strategies and Social Constructions

• In Event: Data, Computation, and Science Education

Abstract

The COVID19 pandemic has given an urgency to public health data in the lives of people everywhere, as we attempt to make sense of risks and differential impacts. Using think-aloud interviews, we identify what data resources and what sensemaking strategies participants use to understand prevalence, spread, and other complex public health issues. Personal connections and context are salient in driving information seeking. Participants vary in favoring news articles versus quantitative tables and graphs; and in fluency of interpretation. This empirically-grounded characterization of the everyday data literacies with which people make sense of the pandemic extends our understanding of public engagement with science. It offers educational implications for cultivating publics who are better equipped to function in an increasingly datafied world.

Authors

• Iris Tabak, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Joshua L. Radinsky, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Aleksandra Adach, UIC LSRI