Digital Literacy Index to Be Measured at HSE

This year's HSE Day held at Gorky Park will be remembered not only for the entertainment on display. Despite the rainy weather, students and lecturers found some time for a serious discussion of the  ‘Digital Literacy Index’ – a joint project between the Higher School of Economics and the regional public organization ‘Center for Internet Technologies’.

Digital literacy includes the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are necessary for living in the modern world and  for safe and effective using of digital technologies and Internet resources.

Sergey Davydov, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Communications, Media and Design noted that despite the fact that today digital literacy is a topical issue, which is currently being actively researched, there is still a lack of data and statistics in this field.

‘We came to the conclusion that main indicators of the index are divided into three groups: ‘digital consumption’, reflecting the level of accessibility of different digital technologies in the regions and their actual use, ‘digital competence’ indicating people’s knowledge, skills and practical experience of communication in digital environment, and ‘digital security’ concerned with users' ability to work safely on the Internet,’ said Sergey Davydov.

Despite some projects that reveal certain aspects of digital literacy, there is no systematic approach to this concept. ‘We have used data statistics, secondary data and our own research, conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center as main sources of information for the project,’ says Olga Logunova, Associate Professor at the School of Sociology and project participant.

The study will help us to assess the usage of public and commercial online services, the level of social network usage, skills of protection from computer viruses and other threats, and users’ attitude towards pirated content, as well as to identify gaps in users’ digital literacy in particular regions.