Digital Exclusion and the Data Creation Gap: An Exploration of the Connections Between Social Limits to Data Access, Data Creation, and Nuanced Exclusions In Human Data Interactions

The greater bulk of research into data has fallen into two main silos: an examination into the barriers people face when accessing data, and investigative studies into how best to support people in their use of data. These studies have helped build on the body of knowledge around Human Data Interaction (HDI) and have provided many interesting insights on the topic of those that are not able to fully benefit from the digital age.
There is, however, a relatively unidentified novel concern around human interactions with data in our current interconnected world. This concern centres on how data itself is created by humans to aid and facilitate human interactions, and how the very process of data creation has certain inbuilt limitations for some individuals because of quasi hidden social limits to their data access in the first place.
The modern world we live in is mostly driven by how humans interact with data. Virtually all applicative fields around us operate with generated data. This study explores how and why the concept of exclusion from HDI can stem from the exclusion of the data generation itself, and not solely from reduced access and ineffectively use as has traditionally been the case. Succinctly put, this study explores the vicious cycle that is created when certain social limits create a lack of access to data, which in turn creates a lack of data generation, which in its own turn creates a limited HDI in certain individuals. This limited HDI then closes the loop by creating/facilitating those social limits to data access that created the cycle in the first place.