Paper short abstract:

In this presentation we explore how a citizen science approach to noise pollution research creates socially robust knowledge. Taking a closer look at a Dutch case study, we show how this approach adds to traditional methodologies for a more inclusive, locally grounded understanding of the issue.

Paper long abstract:

Noise pollution has emerged as a significant concern in Dutch communities near railroads, impacting health and well-being. As the EU plans to double rail freight traffic by 2050 for sustainable transportation, the issue is expected to become more severe. Therefore, accurately assessing noise pollution is crucial for effective policymaking and enforcement. Current scientific methods for noise monitoring predominantly rely on models, calculating mean sound levels over extended periods. However, these methods often diverge from local perceptions and experiences, such as insufficiently accounting for peak noise levels in the short term, leading to criticism and growing distrust.

In response, concerned citizens have embraced the role of citizen scientists, measuring noise levels themselves with affordable yet quality sound meters. Despite originating from dissatisfaction and distrust, this citizen science approach has the potential to bridge gaps between science, society, and policy. Our study focuses on a citizen science project concerning noise pollution from freight train traffic. In the village of America (North-Limburg, the Netherlands), we conducted an interdisciplinary citizen science case study, with scientists and citizens collaboratively measuring noise levels and acute noise hindrance. The study was a joint effort between scientists and citizens at every stage of the process. Through interviews and project documentation, we explored the transformative impact of citizen science on the social robustness of policy-relevant science. The results emphasize that acquiring "real-world knowledge" at a local level, employing a transdisciplinary approach, and using an iterative research process contribute to the social robustness of scientific knowledge in this field.

Paper short abstract:

This talk studies the reconfigurations of the problem of air pollution linked to the emergence of new citizen mobilizations, driven by the growth of the low-cost sensor market.

Paper long abstract:

Air pollution is a major public health problem despite three decades of scientific and activist mobilizations. In 2019, the World Health Organization ranked it among the top ten threats to global health (WHO, 2019). According to the WHO, 99% of the world's population is exposed to pollution levels that exceed the recommended thresholds, causing 7 million premature deaths worldwide (WHO, 2023). These concerning results echo those published by French national health agencies, indicating that chronic exposure to fine particles is responsible for 48,000 premature deaths per year (Santé Publique France, 2016). The ongoing of the air pollution problem has led to a series of reconfigurations, including the emergence of a new citizen mobilizations.

This talk studies these recent reconfigurations, driven by the growth of the low-cost sensor market. However, it shifts the focus from the role of the mobilized groups to that of scientists and institutional players involved in participatory and citizen science projects. Based on a field survey carried out during my thesis in Paris, this talk highlights that scientists and institutional stakeholders join citizen science projects with their own interests and objectives, which are different from those carried by mobilized collectives. This results in significant power asymmetries which reduce the role of the mobilized groups to the mere collection of digital data. It shows how this reduction of the citizen to a sensor of environmental pollution limits the capacity of a citizen science project to transform into a mobilization capable of redefining and reconfiguring the problem of air pollution on a local scale.

Paper short abstract:

What is a citizen science (CS) without science as an infrastructure? We investigated five citizen observatories and observed discrepancies between founders’ visions of continuity and the vulnerable reality of the observatories. We explain this with a distinction between CS and citizen observatory.

Paper long abstract:

Participatory environmental monitoring initiatives, as responses to environmental concerns, attracted attention from publics, scientists, and environmental management. These initiatives, in order to fulfil their vision of monitoring, require continuity and stability. However, most of them are short-lived or temporally vulnerable. This research has investigated the temporal vulnerabilities of these initiatives. Through qualitative analysis, this text has compared four citizen observatories created with visions of long-term monitoring or empowering local communities. In the course of this research, discrepancies were observed between the founders’ expectations of continuity in environmental monitoring and the vulnerable reality of citizen observatories. These discrepancies are explained by an analytical distinction between Citizen Science and Citizen Observatory, wherein the latter lacks ties to scientific infrastructure. The findings show that lacking science as an infrastructure leads to a lack of legitimacy to fill infrastructural gaps and thus prevents citizen observatories from fulfilling their vision of long-term environmental monitoring.

Paper short abstract:

Citizen science approaches to scientific research often fail to adequately consider local research priorities. As counter to dominant conceptions of citizen science, this presentation outlines an ongoing microplastics monitoring collaboration that forefronts community research sovereignty.

Paper long abstract:

Citizen science approaches to environmental monitoring often prioritize normative research ethics throughout the research process. Indeed, many citizen science endeavors seek to assimilate citizen researchers into existing research standards and practices, often with a business-as-usual approach to leadership in research planning, results analysis, and dissemination. This formula is relatively non-disruptive to dominant scientific norms but does not attend to specific place-based research priorities. For many Indigenous communities in particular, outside researchers have been a vector for settler violence, where data extraction and parachute research continue to reproduce the colonial desire for settler access to Indigenous lands.

The presentation will discuss an ongoing marine microplastic monitoring collaboration that takes place in Nunatsiavut (the autonomous Inuit land claim area in Labrador, Canada) in collaboration with the Nunatsiavut Government (NG). As a counter to dominant science articulations of citizen participation in research processes, this presentation will outline how our study disrupts academic conceptions of access and skill through a community-centered, rights-based research approach. The presentation will contrast our rights-based approach with dominant modes of community-based research that often ignore or misinterpret community articulations of research goals, best practices, and consent. Further, we will discuss how our research design and community-based methods prioritize place-based conceptions of microplastic pollution to meet specific community-determined research objectives and forefront research sovereignty in Nunatsiavut. Lastly, the presentation troubles common conceptions of citizen science by discussing how a rights-based approach inherently moves power out of academia and into community.

Paper short abstract:

The citizen sciences take many forms. They can also be seen as both reinforcing and undermining institutional relations at the interface of science and democracy. Viewed in terms of their transformative potential, what are the challenges and the opportunities? And what then is the role for STS?

Paper long abstract:

It has been noted (van Oudheusden et al, 2023) that citizen science should be seen as ‘valuably plural’ in form and, relatedly, as playing varied roles with regard to the relationship between science and democracy. Is there a difference here between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ approaches? And do different forms of citizen science reinforce or undermine current relations between knowledge and democracy?

Many key questions arise when considering the transformative potential of a plurality of citizen sciences. In this presentation, I intend to raise a number of challenges and opportunities for citizen science(s) in engaging with formal institutions, and with research and innovation policy. Among these is the relationship between the citizen sciences and current debates over the assessment of research quality. Can the development of the citizen sciences provoke new institutional responses to research evaluation? Another is the connection between citizen science projects and so-called ‘grand challenges’. Does the ‘bottom-up’ nature of many citizen science projects represent a complementary or contradictory approach? As a third example, there is the general relationship with citizenship, empowerment and inclusion. Do the citizen sciences provoke us to think differently about established forms of public engagement?

Since there has long been a relationship between the citizen sciences and STS, it is also important to ask what these questions mean for our own field of study. What role can and should STS play in the possibly transformative role of the citizen sciences? And what would this mean for the making and doing of STS?

Paper short abstract:

The talk problematises how Citizen Science as a participatory research approach is conceptualized, promoted, and potentially transformed regarding its core values and driving actors in a national citizen science contest in Germany.

Paper long abstract:

Citizen science is an umbrella term describing public participation in knowledge production, developed in various communities of practice. Its increasing popularity and pluralisation have led to calls for either mainstreaming or further multiplying its definitions, aims and values.

In this presentation, I explore how citizen science is conceptualised within a national citizen science contest in Germany. As the first of its kind in terms of outreach, stakeholders and experts’ involvement, and awarded funds, the contest arguably functions as an important, potentially transformative research policy tool within the current German citizen science landscape.

I argue, that within the intertwined practices of the contest's research funding, stakeholder engagement and scientific community building, a specific mode of enacting citizen science is particularly promoted and supported. This mode differs significantly from the two core traditions of citizen science, which are rooted in social and political activism and academia, respectively.

In my analysis, I show how this mode has both multiplying and mainstreaming effects on the definitions, aims and values that drive citizen science hoping to potentially generate transferable knowledge for reflecting on the underlying values and understandings of ‘Wissenschaft’ at play in citizen science and other participatory research approaches.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores what opportunities and challenges can be found when the public plans citizen science projects. This will be done by looking at how the City of Aarhus creates citizen science-driven interventions in Aarhus, Denmark through Actor-Network Theory and Situational Analysis.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation explores what challenges, limitations and opportunities can be found within the complex ecosystem of a smart city when the public plans citizen science projects. This will be done by looking at how the City of Aarhus creates citizen science-driven interventions in Aarhus, Denmark, focused on solving environmental problems through the participation of its citizens. The interventions will be studied with Actor-Network Theory and Situational Analysis.

I describe Aarhus’ two interventions in the Horizon 2020 EU project DivAirCity. Focusing on air quality and diversity, the project seeks to improve environmental, health and social conditions in cities by prioritising participation of the groups deemed most at risk. The two interventions are focused on 1) creating an alternative route with better air quality for wheelchair users, and 2) making an inclusive green screen and pocket park together with locals.

I touch upon my methodological approaches, such as Actor-Network Theory (Law, 1992; Callon, 1986) and Situational Analysis (Clarke et al., 2022), and I also explain the ethnographic methods used for my case study, such as interviews and participatory observations (Tracy, 2013; Charmaz, 2007).

I then explain my findings, discussing how collaboration functions between the public and its citizens in this particular Danish case, and what opportunities and obstacles occur when a public organisation makes use of citizen science. I explore how the City of Aarhus views citizen science versus how the citizens view themselves in such a role, and what possible frictions may occur between these two views.

Paper short abstract:

Theoretical and empirical research on CS for traditional and scientific knowledge dialogue, within the Amazon region's socio-bioeconomy agendas, from a decolonial view. Safeguards, protocols, governance, infrastructures cross issues such as cognitive justice, data sovereignty, and benefit sharing.

Paper long abstract:

The Amazon region has historically suffered from the predatory exploitation of the forest and violence against traditional communities, resulting in the loss of socio-biodiversity, water pollution, climate imbalance, increased poverty, and social vulnerability. Socio-bioeconomy has been seen as a way of combining nature protection and the well-being of local populations. Strategies in this direction advocate the intersection and collaboration between Research, Development, and Innovation (RD&I), Cultural Heritage and Traditional Knowledge, Public Policies, and Sustainable Businesses.

Citizen science emerges as a methodological strategy that potentially facilitates this collaboration, particularly in the dialogue between traditional knowledge and scientific-technological knowledge, and its results for the formulation of public and private policies. In Latin America, citizen science finds, in turn, a legacy of experimentation and theorization from a decolonial point of view. The meeting of decolonial theses and new agendas for the co-production of knowledge, using platformed digital infrastructures and tools, poses new challenges.

This work presents reflections and learnings, derived from theoretical and empirical research on topics and points of view under debate regarding the articulation between traditional knowledge and scientific knowledge, its possibilities, and limits. It analyzes the particularities of this debate in the context of the socio-biodiversity and socio-bioeconomy agendas, in the Amazonian scenario. This poses the need to face some challenges, such as: legal and ethical safeguards, research and data protocols, governance systems, open and accessible infrastructures, aiming to guarantee cognitive justice, data sovereignty, and benefit sharing.

The potential for social transformation from these citizen science initiatives lies less in the products and services that result from them. It lies above all in the learning derived from the processes of mutual listening between these different actors and the resulting solutions to territorial, social and environmental problems, and needs.

Paper short abstract:

Citizen science - Widespread - grassroots innovation - open science

Paper long abstract:

In the context of sustainable societal and environmental transitions, citizen science (CS) has a key role to play as it contributes to the democratization of innovation. Citizen science promotes intermediation between the scientific third sector (Ottolini, 2020, Lhoste and Sardin 2024) and academic organisations (Alliss 2017, Houllier and al. 2017). We postulate that 1/ such cooperation is a robust configuration for the production of actionable knowledge 2/ methods and skills tested in previous CS experiences justify an attempt to generalise some of them 3/ CS allows the endogenous development of the network.

In this communication we discuss the results of a multi-stakeholder research project called EQUIPACT. The aim of this project is to improve the quality and societal impact of CS. The consortium consists of eight NGO’s, two public laboratories, three public research institutes, one museum and one private laboratory. Our communication addresses the question of the transformative potential of citizen science. First, we will contribute to the generalisation of the methods and skills previously developed by the partners of EQUIPACT. Second, , we will focus on brakes and levers to CS success along the scientific time (excluding : upstream / downstream). This leads us to explore datas on local interfaces (network or territorial), documentation, monitoring and evaluation tasks.

Paper short abstract:

Citizen radiation measurements, a longstanding practice in Japan, have tensions with mainstream science. Discrepancies in measurement units (Sieverts/Becquerels) highlight divergent materialities, analyzed through Karen Barad's Agential Realism to understand the conflict's foundational differences.

Paper long abstract:

Citizen radiation measurements, in which citizens measure radiation around residential areas, is one of the longstanding citizen sciences in Japan that emerged in response to the Chernobyl disaster in the late 1980s. Following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2011, tensions between citizens and mainstream science (government and professional scientists) arose regarding radiation exposure assessments. Discrepancies in interpretations, particularly concerning dose limits, highlight differences in measurement device selection, methods, and targets within citizen science. For example, in terms of radiation protection and exposure control, the government uses Sieverts (Sv) to define off-limits zones and decontamination areas. This sievert standard is used to justify measures such as requiring local residents to evacuate and lifting evacuation orders. However, citizen radiation measurements are taken in Becquerel (Bq) units. They argue that the becquerel contained in the soil should be measured and used to determine contamination levels and evacuation standards. Why does citizen science diverge from mainstream scientific measurements? In this study, I employ Karen Barad's Agential Realism to analyze the materiality and agency of measurement practices in citizen science and government. Focusing on measurement units as “apparatus,” it contrasts Bq-based citizen measurements with Sv-based mainstream scientific measurements, revealing divergent materialities underlying the conflict and realities. Through an agential lens, I explore the ontological implications of measurement choices, shedding light on the foundational differences driving the conflict. It underscores the importance of understanding the materiality of citizen science in addressing societal challenges and fostering inclusive, equitable knowledge systems.

Paper short abstract:

The lasting impact of environmental citizen science projects and the possibility for participants to enact meaningful processes of local transformation is largely unexplored. We examine the afterlives of these projects, providing insights into a critical topic for sustainable citizen science.

Paper long abstract:

Derived from their current popularity in public and scientific discourse, citizen science projects tend to receive a lot of attention during their planning and initial implementation. This is especially true for environmentally focused projects. Citizen science is usually portrayed as a key tool to allow citizens to gain a deeper understanding and/or start acting regarding the local effects of environmental degradation, from assessing industrial pollution to enacting small-scale restoration initiatives. It is usually assumed that after implementation, when the organizing scientists leave and/or funding runs out, these projects will continue somehow or at least serve as catalyzers for new local initiatives. However, very little research has been done exploring the critical issue of sustainability and the impact for the local communities involved. The afterlives of citizen science projects remain a largely unexplored territory in STS and public engagement in science. We present early insights from an ongoing project analyzing the afterlives of several environmental citizen science projects carried out in Latin America in the last decade. Instead of the promised path of growing engagement, our findings show how these projects tend to develop something like zombie lives after scientists leave; being neither death nor alive. This outcome severely diminishes citizens’ potential to enact substantive processes of local transformation. Exploring the situated afterlives of these projects and how citizens (can) make do with their remainders, we provide insights into multiple forms of zombie lives of citizen science projects. This will help us think about how we can do such projects otherwise.

Paper short abstract:

We share the perspectives of practitioners, researchers, and participants in citizen science (and related) projects from across the globe who participated in a postdigital collective writing project. We highlight tensions and possibilities their experiences revealed for postdigital citizen science.

Paper long abstract:

Citizen science has been characterized as the democratization of science--a ‘social movement’ that creates opportunities for the coming together of “science, policy makers, and society as a whole in an impactful way” (EU) and for “people from all walks of life” to participate in, develop, or lead studies of relevance to them and/or their communities (CitSciNZ, 2022). More recently, digital tools, including mobile apps, drones, sensors, GPS tools, etc., are becoming a cornerstone of citizen science initiatives, touted as ‘facilitating novel project development, public participation, data collection, visualization and sharing’ (CitSciNZ, 2022). As transdisciplinary scholars whose work intersects in the "postdigital" realm, we are interested in questions of how societies and institutions are (re)configured through socio-technical educational and political contexts in which the digital/analog are impossible to disentangle, i.e., postdigital education. We have begun to explore the dimensions of how these entanglements play out in citizen science and humanities. More recently, we recruited practitioners, researchers, and participants in citizen science (and related) projects to participate in a postdigital collective writing project in which they shared their own thoughts and experiences on citizen science. In this paper presentation, we highlight these diverse perspectives on citizen science from the contributors in citizen science projects across the globe. We discuss how the various approaches to citizen science articulated in the voices of practitioners themselves reveal tensions and possibilities in postdigital citizen science, the words we use to describe it, and the nuances in power and ethics across its multiple configurations.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this communication is to analyse the form of citizen science taken by an open database of food products, Open Food Facts. This database, which works with government agencies, is caught up in socio-technical controversies that force it to position itself in relation to them.

Paper long abstract:

In this communication, I assess Open Food Facts (OFF), a digital common materialized by an open data and open-source world database of 3 billion industrial food products, as a community of citizen science. This database is involved in several scientific score tests. It is a citizen common base which works mainly with scientific governmental institutes, such as France Public Health and Energy and Environmental Management Agency (EEMA).

I carried out a qualitative study of OFF, France Public Health and EEMA. My investigation combines interviews and governmental and scientific reports.

Twice the labels in which OFF participated found themselves caught up in socio-technical controversies and forced the association to position itself in relation to them. By examining OFF's positioning, we will attempt to analyse this citizen science form, engagement and evolution of its relationship with governmental institutions. How does OFF manage to maintain good relations without taking up a position, and in the name of what?

Firstly, I will analyse the specific form of citizen science OFF takes. Collecting data and displaying scores, transpose scientific criteria for food quality into people's everyday lives. OFF brings science closer to people and brings data back to science. How this double movement is a specific form of citizen science (Susanne Hecker et al., 2018)?

Secondly, I will show how OFF positions itself. OFF gets credit and legitimacy for being used by scientists. By trying to stay out of controversies, how do they maintain a position of neutrality with governmental institutions?

Paper short abstract:

We investigate the ongoing developments of the GREENGAGE Innovation Action, a governance and policy lab that assembles technology providers, academics, local planning agents and civic innovators to set up ethical collaborative environments for innovating local policy making through citizen science.

Paper long abstract:

The GREENGAGE Innovation Action (HORIZON 2022) is a governance and policy lab that assembles technology providers, academics, local planning agents and civic innovators to set up ethical collaborative environments for innovating local policy making. Referred to as Observatories, they are envisioned as situated, data-driven, community-led intelligence supporting the European Green Deal. This intelligence is produced within the Academy, a multi-stakeholder interaction platform, public toolbox and knowledge base, and a replicable framework fostering systemic changes beyond GREENGAGE.

The preparation of Observatories began with restructuring project governance to enable experimentation across five pilots and to establish roles for organising transdisciplinary learning within a pan-European innovation ecosystem.

In the upcoming phase, the Academy tests the pilot prototypes by engaging communities through tech-aided citizen science, applied to intermediate between urban and regional planning challenges and the expectations and aspirations on the ground. Situated in interrelated use cases, we explore tensions driven by environmental change, socio-economic inequalities and low civic participation in democratic policy making. By providing different points of access to human and other-than-human (technologies, discourses) participants, we challenge top-down transition policies to become relevant for localised communities and actionable for their authorities. To enhance possibilities for meaningful participation of historically underrepresented groups in policy making, the Academy builds on analogue and digital interaction platforms and invites marginalised people to organise discursive interventions.

Following, we discuss and cluster reflections on the organisation of knowledge co-production and application within the exploratory stage to understand barriers and potentials for transformative learning and governance through GREENGAGE Observatories.