About

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Digital competences are now seen as a key qualification for social participation in an increasingly digitalised society and include knowledge, skills and awareness of how to move safely and effectively in the digital world. These are contrasted at the individual level by the broader concept of digital agency, which, in addition to knowledge and skills, also considers digital confidence and responsibility as relevant dimensions in dealing with digital artefacts. Gendered stereotypes influence the type and extent of women's* approach to technology-related fields, which are still connoted as male*. It can be assumed that marginalised groups such as women* or older people in particular adopt and internalise stereotypical ideas about their own digital agency over the course of their lives, which inhibits their willingness to acquire digital skills in the long term.

Goals:

The DigitalEncounters project aims to uncover and dismantle inequalities in self-images and images of others in relation to digital agency in society from an intersectional perspective. It examines how social groups (especially people with low digital self-confidence) experience encounters with technology, how these encounters affect the DA-related self-image, and which interventions are to be implemented to reduce negative attributions of self and other. By recording the qualitative quality of attributions on the self-image and the image of others in relation to digital agency, a framework on stereotyped self-images will be developed and tested using a specially developed instrument to survey stereotyped self-images.

Methodological approach:

Within the scope of focus groups, attitudes of people with various social identities (gender, age(s), social class) are surveyed with regard to possible manifestations of self-image. In a quantitative study, selected individual characteristics as well as structural factors and differences with regard to self-images and images of others will be examined intersectionally. Furthermore, a "Tinker Box" will be developed, which, consisting of hardware and software packages as well as information material, will enable a series of practical tasks in the sense of typical work steps in dealing with selected key technologies (e.g. laser printer, programming tools). On the basis of an application and default concept, the effects of success and failure on self-image are recorded and it is explored how people from different social groups with lower digital self-confidence encounter new technologies. In a subsequent co-design process with the addressed social groups, intervention concepts are developed that allow users to deal with aspects of DA and to question their own stereotypes.

Outcomes targeted in DigitalEncounters:

• a diversity-sensitive instrument to survey self-perceptions and perceptions of others with regard to digital agency;
• the framework on stereotyped and gendered attributions to self-images and images of others in relation to digital agency;
• the intervention toolbox for testing digital technologies in a protected environment with intervention concepts for empowerment and stereotype reduction that allow users to engage with aspects of DA and challenge their own stereotypes.

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This project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology and carried out as a FEMTech research project (FO999892840) within the framework of the "Talente" programme.