ECSA 2016: Open Citizen Science – Day 2 (Afternoon)
[rough draft – will be corrected and updated later]
The afternoon started with citizen science studies – with short talks and interactive session that was about
Citizen Science Studies – Engaging with the participatory turn in the co-production of science and society Elevator talks & interactive session organised by Dana Mahr University of Geneva, CH; Anett Richter Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany; Claudia Göbel Museum für Naturkunde Berlin | ECSA, Germany
Co-chairs: Alan Irwin Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; Katrin Vohland Museum für Naturkunde Berlin | GEWISS, Germany; Sascha Friesike Alexander von Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
Dana – astonishment as a starting point: the six organisers – astonished by the scale of interest of public participation in science, which is different from PUS or science for the people. There are multiple interpretation – from methods to contract between science and society 2.0. It is adopted to many areas of knowing – though it is happening across the Western world, from physics to patient interests. There are modes of participation and reflecting on epistemology, social history, either as actors or as critical sociologists , studies of science. Is why to we reflect on citizen science – do we have citizen science studies ? They received 50 proposals. Finally they decided to have short presentation: two stages of lightening talks – 5 minutes talkl: who you are what you are working on, and what your interests. We need to organise people very well.
Citizen Humanities: Configuring Interpretation and Perception for Participation Dick Kasperowski; Christopher Kullenberg University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Part of a project taking science to the crowd – understanding how the participants are being constructed. Several citizen humanities – like Zooniverse and elsewhere, usually link to interpretation, assuming that it is constructed through a long training and contextual knowledge. The participants are seen as annotaters, transcribers – low level of skills, they are being limited to automation. Project avoid inclusion. Focusing on perceptional quality of participants.
Are the rhetorics of citizen science prohibiting detailed accounts of its own practice? Christian Nold UCL, UK. Worked in an EU project and try to follow the devices of citizen science, and we don’t look at the technologies of citizen science. As a designer & artist look at the sensing devices in different way. Air quality, noise monitoring – the project are part of bigger agendas – actually link to IoT and there is something interesting that is doing much more things that it what is measured and why. When we take them to specific context (e.g. Heathrow) the gain specific agency ,they are redesigned constantly. There are implication to citizen science: if it is a design practice, we will end up with different outcomes, and valuation – being reflective practitioner about the whole thing: what does it mean to care for an app. There are ontological aspects – how they are built into the devices: new type of environmentalism.
The (Citizen-)Scientification of Society and the Pleasures of Research. Citizen Science as Science Communication Sascha Dickel TU München, Germany. Sociological STS research – leader of a project on citizen science. He suggest the following hypotheses – citizen science is part of the scientification of society. Science as institution, culture, expand to many areas. This is education, mass media Second hypothesis: citizen science is scientification by participation. Assume that the public take part in scientific research – there are incentives for professional people, but there are different motivations. Discourse frame the incentive to participation. Citizen science discourse is framed as meaningful leisure. Linking it to concept of deeper meaning – civic participation and fun. Citizen science exapnd reserch to private sphere and reinforcing science as an instituion. There was questions and discussions.
Who Cares? Reflections on participatory research inviting written care stories Elisabeth Reitinger; Gert Dressel, Barbara Pichler; Günter Müller; Edith Auer; Nevin Altintop University of Klagenfurt, Austria; Bärbel Traunsteiner Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria; Monika Gugerell Austria; Katharina Heimerl University of Klagenfurt, Austria
Participatory turn’s legacy and the European ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ emerging framework Hadrian Macq University of Liege, Belgium. Is enthusiastic regarding citizen science, but as a PhD student who need to be reflective, he explores the normative aspects of citizen science in Horizon 2020 – the specific aspects that it is developing: public understand of science, public engagement and responsible research and innovation. They were criticised in the literature and the risk of closing down research. Explore the political and economic context of citizen science at the EC. Research and innovation is reoriented towards economic growth to tackle societal problems. There is concern about engagement fatigue and assumption that research and innovation is driven by industry and academia, and sometime citizen science can be seen instrumentally by the commission.
Creating Communicative Spaces that nurture inquiry, reflection, and dialogue in citizen science Cindy Regalado Univ. College London, UK; Shannon Dosemagen Public Lab. for Open Technology and Science, USA. Zooming to the local level – looking both as community organiser in Public Lab: grasroots organisation – engaging people as researchers, pull complexity off the shelf; built in openness into science as a social process – e.g. through kite mapping; collaborative workflows – either on the website with research notes, maintaining a data archive; protecting openness with viral licensing and celebrating local innovation. As a researcher, want to point 3 things: notice Arnstein about the real power to change the process, decontextualisation of success stories – the participatory city.
Who are the citizens in citizen science? Public participation in distributed computing Jérome Baudry; Élise Tancoigne; Bruno Strasser University of Geneva, Switzerland Wisdom of the crowd as value-creation Roel During; Rosalie van Dam; Irini Salverda Wageningen University, Netherlands
Bruno explores the citizens and citizen science. There are a whole range of practices that are called citizen science – but it changing the exclusion of amateurs participation in production of scientific knwoledge after an era of lack of participation. They will look at India, China, Europe, and US. They will look at medical, DIY science, crowdsourcing. They will look at the discourse and the ideas about parts of science – they will also look at current and past phenomena ond current ones – aiming to have biographies for 1m people who participate in citizen science. What is the political and social economy of citizen science. What is the kind of knowledge that is being produced.
Openness in biohacking: expertise and citizen science Rosen Bogdanov Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain. Researching biohacking and practicing of openness in biohacking groups. There are issues of scientific expertise and there is less talk about that in citizen science. There are different types of expertise – interactional expertise, universal expertise – available everywhere. There are issues of keeping the relationships between types of expertise neatly separate. There is lack of scientific citizens. There are different practices of inclusion and exclusion within the community of biohackers.
Dingdingdong. Interferences with the Natural History of a Disease Katrin Solhdju Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. Hostorian/philosopher of science with interest in medial – part of ding ding dong disease about huntington disease. They address current imagination of the disease and defining as only tragic and prescribe the self fulfilling profecy of how it is experienced. They are trying to consider a better environment for the people who are involved – history of the disease, speculative narration, dance and choreography and more.
Observing the observer: Citizen Social Science and the Participatory Turn Alexandra Albert University of Manchester, UK . trying to understand citizen scocial science, in social citizen science is more than usual participation and they are observe and analyse their information – beyond the usual practices of social science. Looking specifically at the mass observation archive, trying to understand the ethnographic methods – anthropology at home, which include observation at home. There are questions about expertise, and what they view it at, and what the observers though that they can be involved as researchers. This is done within sociology. Hope to lead to interesting observation on the potential of citizen social science. She will follow several case studies, which are about critiquing the method.
What can Citizen Science learn from participatory research? Tobias Krüger; Johannes Himmelreich; Anne Dombrowski; Bettina König, Jörg Niewoehner Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. From a cross faculty institute that look at human-environment relations. looking at participatory research – we can learn a lot from integrating literature. Build decision support tools for water quality, and done the model in a participatory way. Citizen science has the potential of setting what science will be done, and control over knowledge production. There are politics of citizen science engagement – who fund, who can hijack projects, and that lead to who’s knowledge count in the end.
Summarising the day is challenging – 8 different sessions with different topics. Some of the reporting back include – John Tweddle – there are conservation impacts of citizen science: showing different approaches – from community led to university led to global databases. There are different ways, lots of different outcomes. Complex pathways. Observations – is citizen science support outcomes? evaluating is difficult but can be powerful demonstration. . Balancing highlighting the community led and working with local communities . Trying to balance autonomy with the need to have large datasets. Max Craglia – about technology: a lot of applications across many aspects – many were funded by EU data. All the data and software were open. Moving towards open source and data – starting to have critical studies of citizen science. Exploring the light polution – there are issues that were above – issues were noted above about light studies. Session 8 -Alena Bartonova – the topics that were lookig at air quality, noise, quality of public spaces. and engagement, looking at the social aspect. Thinking about empowerment. In air pollution there are many tools and information that is available, but in each project they are forgotten and there isn’t continuity of use and application. There are technologies and users but there are problem in doing it together – lack of co-design. Lucy Robinson – The session on innovative science looked at mosquitos, molecular bio, crowdsourcing research question of mental health. Issues of evaluation came up. Failure is equally important as success. Session on participatory social innovation – looked at the connection of digital social innovation and citizen science. Identifying difference – need to solve new societal challenges. Shared lessons and challenges: structure engagement, levels of participation, motivation. Need to think of actionable policy recommendation. Never just a question of providing participation and motivation, but also dealing with conflicting practices and values. Alan Irwin – looking at the participatory turn: there were many papers on critical studies of citizen science. Connecting up research community with practitioners – there are many reflective practitioners. Lots of cross over. Need to maintain space for the groups to get together. Balance of discussion on the nature of citizen science and scientification of society – which led to a lively discussion. What are the politics, what the modes of citizenship? Not all citizen science is good automatically and maintain these critical question. Education – specifically about schools and starting a new working group at ECSA, look at the specific needs.
Plenary discussion, ECSA GA & Citizen Science Disco
