CITIZEN SCIENCETodd Suomela

University of Tennessee

tes@utk.edu

@tsuomela

Situating myself• Early obsession with weather and astronomy• College education

• Planned to be an astronomer• But transferred into the humanities: philosophy and English

• “Real world” experience in business technology (MIS)• Back to the academy

• HCI -> STS

• Currently• Science communication• Philosophy of technology and science• Science/social informatics

Problem• Citizen science

• “Citizen science [is the] participation of the general public in scientific research”

• RQ: How is citizen science framed in different discourse communities?

• RQ: How does information travel from experts to non-experts?

• RQ: How does citizen science alter the relationship between public(s) and science(s)?

Methods

• Research journal papers• Press releases• Media reports

Content analysis

• Scientists• Press officers• Journalists• Volunteers

Interviews

Significance• STS –

• Public understanding of science• Expert and non-expert divides

• Science communication• Frame creation and diffusion

• Information science• Everyday information creation• Amateur information seeking (?)

ToC• Science Communication• Citizen Science• The Critical Challenge• Problems

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

How/Why to communicate science?• The world is becoming more complex

• Increasing levels of technology and scientific knowledge• Easier to share across wide areas

• Grand challenges for science• How do scientists communicate large-scale issues like global

warming among themselves?• How do scientists communicate to the public?• Examples: global warming, nuclear power, genetically modified

organisms, vaccine use

Science Communication

• Laypeople just need more education to understand the issues and concepts

Deficit model

• Laypeople have local expertise that can be harnessed to help understand a problem

Lay expertise

Brossard & Lewenstein, 2009

Science communication

• Laypeople understand based on their contextual experiences

Contextual model

• Laypeople should be integrated into science and technical discussions

Public understanding

Brossard & Lewenstein, 2009

Public understanding• A more sophisticated understanding of science

communication

• Framing effects are present• Emotion, class, and other background factors effect the

transmission of scientific knowledge to the public

• Brings in democratic theory and practice• Builds a forum for communication between scientists and laypeople• Does not put one group above the other

Framing Science

Social progressEconomic

development/competitiveness

Morality/ethics

Scientific/technical

uncertainty

Pandora’s box/Frankenstein

’s monster/runaway

science

Public accountability/go

vernance

Third way/alternative

pathsConflict/strategy

Nisbet & Scheufele, 2007

CITIZEN SCIENCE

Citizen science – an opportunityTo bring public and science together.

History of Citizen Science• Introduced in the 1990s

• But earlier antecedents exist• National Weather Service, Audubon Society Christmas bird count,

AAVSO

• Two traditions• Critical-emancipatory• Pragmatic-instrumental

• Factors for growth• Improvements in technology• Public is a potential labor source• Funding requirements for public outreach

Projects, Papers

• Recent project counts• 280 projects from

Cornell lab mailing list (Wiggins & Crowston, 2010)

• 500 projects currently listed at SciStarter.org

Typologies

Wiggins & Crowston, 2012

Where is the internet?• Recruitment: Mediator for connecting scientists to non-

scientists• Data collection and analysis: project websites provide an

interface for the collection and analysis of data• Data sharing: collected data may be shared with other

scientists or the public via internet data stores or reports• Infrastructure: wires, routers, mobile, GPS, standards• Paradigms: 4th paradigm of data intensive science

• But does it create a community, a crowd, or a public?

THE CRITICAL CHALLENGE

How critical do I go? • Balancing act between disciplines and traditions

• Science communication• STS• Information science

• Two traditions• Critical-emancipatory• Pragmatic-instrumental

To be critical =? theory• Currently working with Habermas

• Communication and rationality• Technical, practical, and emancipatory inquiry

• Can there be communicative action between citizen scientists and professional scientists?

• Other options• ANT, sociotechnical imaginaries, trading zones, social epistemology,

leisure science, participatory culture, user generated content, sociology of professions, informal learning, common-pool resources, feminism, rhetoric of science communication

• What other options might work?

PROBLEMS

Problems• How critical do I go?

• The problem of online crowd labor.• Other critical problems you may notice?

• How much theory should I include?• The problem of scale:

• Micro, meso, or macro?• What scale do you think would you be interested in hearing about

at a conference or in a reading about in a journal paper?

References• Brossard, D. & Lewenstein, B.V., 2009. A Critical

Appraisal of Models of Public Understanding of Science: Using Practice to Inform Theory. In L. Kahlor & P. A. Stout, eds. Communicating Science: New Agendas in Communication. London: Routledge.

• Nisbet, M. & Scheufele, D.A., 2007. The future of public engagement. The Scientist, 21, pp.38–44.

• Wiggins, A. & Crowston, K., 2012. Goals and tasks: Two typologies of citizen science projects. In Forty-fifth Hawai’i International Conference on System Science (HICSS-45). Wailea, HI.