Digital mediation, privacy and smartphones, feedback on a questionnaire

Perhaps you saw a questionnaire for digital mediators last April? This survey is the first step in the creation of a pedagogical kit for people who wish to lead workshops on this theme. We propose here to tell you about the genesis of the project, as well as what we learned from the 166 answers to the questionnaire.

Why do you want to create an educational kit for digital mediators?

Our goal is to make our discoveries and expertise accessible to as many people as possible. To do so, we can rely on a large network of digital mediators. We know that librarians, volunteers, teachers or facilitators of Espaces Publics Numériques (Digital Public Spaces) regularly use our tools and propose awareness campaigns. We are committed to adapting our tools to their needs.

We have already worked with digital mediation professionals to improve the design of our platform, but we wanted to go further by proposing a pedagogical kit for digital mediators. It would enable volunteers or professionals to easily conduct a workshop on privacy and smartphones, without having to create it from scratch.

Identify the needs of digital mediators

In order to find out if this idea could correspond to a real need, we proposed an online questionnaire for two weeks in April 2020. It included several questions on:

• Workshops already conducted by the respondent person;
• His/her opinion on an educational kit: its interest, the target audience and what should, ideally, compose it;
• The type of digital mediation place concerned.

We had 168 responses, 166 were usable. The most represented entities were associations and libraries, followed by schools and Espaces publics numériques. As the information was disseminated via our networks and relays, it goes without saying that we certainly reached people who were already sensitive to privacy issues, and the results are undeniably biased. The full results can be found at the bottom of this post, but we offer you a summary.

Questions about privacy and smartphones are of interest to the digital mediators who responded. However, it is not an easy subject to tackle: the issue is complex, it is difficult to know where to start, there is no miracle solution and it is not easy to find time for it.

The proposal for an educational kit received positive feedback, since a large majority of respondents expressed interest. Both tools to help the person in charge of the animation and supports and resources for the participants were desired, with attention paid to attractive supports, such as videos.

The target audiences are quite large, but are primarily aimed at beginners or people who are comfortable with the digital tool and less at experts.

And now?

After this needs gathering phase, we decided to continue the project by imagining to build an educational kit designed to be able to run two awareness workshops: one for a beginner audience and another for an audience that is comfortable handling its smartphone, but not necessarily on privacy issues. In the kit, there will be:

• a slideshow
• videos
• a precise sequence of events for the person in charge of the workshop, with assistance for animation techniques
• a summary sheet for participants

The coordination of the project and the creation of the pedagogical contents will be carried out by Exodus Privacy, but we have decided to call upon external service providers on aspects for which we are not competent enough. The artist and graphic designer _Lila* will work on this project for the graphic design and layout and NetFreaks for the motion design and video editing. We are very happy to have them with us!

Our association only works with donations (to support us, it’s here), we have submitted a funding application to the Afnic foundation for digital solidarity… We will have the answer in a few months! Until then, we keep our fingers crossed…

The raw results of the questionnaire

Have you ever led a workshop on the theme of privacy and smartphones?

• No, but I would like to: 102
• Yes : 58
• No and I don’t want to: 6

If no (108 responses), for what reason(s)? (in bold proposed answers, the others are free answers - multiple answers possible)

• I don’t know where to start: 62
• Due to lack of interest or requests: 15
• Due to lack of time: 15
• The subject is too complicated: 11
• No opportunities yet: 5
• Due to lack of resources and/or skills: 5
• Due to economic reasons (new position, media library under construction …): 5
• The theme is addressed in other informal actions: 3
• Other topics are privileged: 2
• We should rather boycott smartphones: 1

If you have ever conducted a workshop (58 responses), were you satisfied with it?

• Yes: 32
• No, not totally: 25
• No: 1

If not, why (free answers)?

• Lack of time: 6
• Vast and complex subject, lack of simple solutions: 6
• Difficulties in getting the issues understood, lack of hard evidence: 5
• Lack of support, skills and/or methodology: 5
• Technical difficulties: 2

If we create an educational kit, would you use it?

• Yes: 123
• Maybe: 42
• No: 1

What do you need? (Multiple answers possible)

• Tools to advise participants: 132
• One or more workshops: 127
• Written material to be given to participants: 103
• Educational videos: 100
• A slide show: 73
• Others : 23

Other proposals include (in descending order of mention): illustrations and practical applications, playful material (cards, quizzes, etc.) with cartoons, links to resources, help in using the kit and expressing oneself in front of the public, posters and stickers, a map and diagrams on how telephony and privacy actors work, a test to validate acquired knowledge, awareness of open-source and GDPR.

For which audience? (several possible answers - in bold the answers proposed by the questionnaire, an “other” field was provided for free answers)

• Teenagers: 119
• Beginners with numerical tools: 119
• Adults
• Elderly: 97
• People comfortable with the numerical tool: 96
• People with disabilities: 38
• Allophones people: 32
• Experts with the numerical tool: 32
• Students: 4
• Teachers : 2
• People with mental disorders: 2
• Colleagues: 1
• Children: 1

In which organization do you do digital mediation? (several possible answers - in bold the answers proposed by the questionnaire, an “other” field was provided for free answers)

• Association: 64
• Libraries: 53
• School: 29
• Cybercentre/EPN: 28
• Community center: 8
• Businesses: 6
• University: 6
• National education: 5
• No organization: 3
• Administrations: 3
• Social center: 2
• International solidarity network: 1