A free bite-sized webinar. To join, go to https://tinyurl.com/globalmilabb just before the webinar start time. We use Blackboard Collaborate (see here https://help.blackboard.com/Collaborate/v12/Participant/Join_a_Session for details on how to use it). You do not have to register for the webinar in advance, but if you’d like to sign up and get reminders that it is coming up, then register here!

In this free webinar Dr Pamela McKinney, Information School, University of Sheffield, will talk about research which aimed to discover what data is tracked by people in three communities (parkrunners, people with type 2 diabetes and people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome). She will also discuss why the data was tracked, and the barriers to safe and effective tracking, particularly in relation to information literacy. There is increasing interest in the use of mobile apps and devices to track aspects of diet, health and wellbeing activity, and research has shown that use of apps can motivate people to adopt healthy behaviours. Information literacy is crucial to the safe and effective use of tracked information in this landscape.

The survey for this project was distributed in early 2018. 143 responses were received from parkrunners; 140 from diabetes.co.uk and 45 from the IBS Network. There were differences in the logging practices of the three communities, and differences in motivations for tracking. The extent of sharing of tracked data also differed, for example parkrunners were the biggest sharers of data, whereas IBS and Diabetes respondents shared less data, and only with close family. Respondents were confident in their abilities to understand tracked data, and how this enabled them to achieve their health goals. However, critical to Information literacy is an understanding of the potential re-use and sharing of data by third parties, and respondents demonstrated much less awareness of this.

This is part of Part of the University of Sheffield Information School's celebration of Global Media and Information Literacy week: a UNESCO-sponsored annual celebration of Media and Information Literacy, with events organised around the world. This year’s theme is Media and Information Literate Citizens: Informed, Engaged, Empowered and the centre for Information Literacy Research (Information School, University of Sheffield) is responding with events and activities on this theme.