Digital policy analysis: a methodological toolkit

This toolkit provides researchers with a step-by-step guide detailing a systematic methodology for evaluating if and how digital policies represent certain groups and their rights. The methodology underpinning the toolkit facilitates an in-depth understanding of how policies consider diversity and inequalities, identifying opportunities for improvement in policies that are shaping not just the present, but also the future. This toolkit can be adapted and applied across different political, legal and cultural contexts and policy domains. It can be used to analyse policies at the global, regional, national, local and institutional level, to uncover commonalities and divergences between and within policies at these levels and between and within countries. This toolkit is borne out of research conducted for the Digital Futures for Children centre (DFC).1 The DFC project analysed the representations of children, their rights and inequalities between them in over 300 digital policies across 35 intergovernmental, regional and national governing bodies. For a detailed description of the findings, please read the accompanying reports: Left out and misunderstood: Children in digital policies. A global review2 and Left out and misunderstood: Children in global, regional and national digital policies.3