COST Action CA15212

Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe STSM Report

Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the

European Union

SHORT TERM SCIENTIFIC MISSION (STSM)

Scientific Report

Understanding engagement mechanisms

of citizen science for participatory policy

by Marisa Ponti

Action Number: CA15212 - 38896

Grantee Name: Dr. Marisa Ponti

Institution Department of Applied Information Technology

University of Gothenburg, Sweden

STSM Title: Understanding engagement mechanisms of citizen science for participatory

policy

STSM start and end date: 09/04/2018 to 13/04/2018

Host Dr. Sven Schade and Dr. Alexandre Polvora

Host Institution: Joint Research Centre, Ispra and Brussels

COST Action CA15212

Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe STSM Report

Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the

European Union

2

Brief Summary

Research Interest: Citizen engagement, citizen science, social innovation STSM Report

Purpose of the STSM (a). Background: Citizen science (CS) needs to be considered beyond the narrow framing of public

engagement in scientific research. The European Commission has stated clearly this need in relation to

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), which is an element of the EU Horizon 2020 program. RRI

calls for researchers, industry, policymakers, NGOs, and members of the general public to "work

together during the whole research and innovation process in order to better align both the process and

its outcomes, with the values, needs, and expectations of European society" (Hacklay, 2015). Since RRI

calls for an inclusive and participatory research process, it opens up opportunities for the integration of

citizen science across the research landscape. Citizen Science can contribute to the Commission’s goal

of RRI, as it can reinforce public engagement and can redirect research agendas towards issues of

concern to citizens. Furthermore, citizens are seen as potentially playing a central and transversal role

to play in supporting research and innovation outcomes and policy agendas that are help tackle societal

problems. Therefore, citizen science can play an important role across many areas of policy in providing

evidence that helps understand the risks and benefits of different policy choices. The applicant conducts

research on citizen science and participation and has participated in the activities of Working Group

(WG) 4 in COST Action CA 15212.

(b). Aims and Objectives: The primary aim of this Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM) was to develop

a collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) in Ispra (IT) and

Brussels (BE), particularly with researchers closely related to citizen science and other public

engagement frameworks in science and technology. This involved the JRC internal project ENGAGE-

DEMO (Ispra with Dr. Ângela Guimarães Pereira from JRC.I2 (Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Policy) and Dr. Sven Schade from JRC.B.6, and Brussels with Alexandre Pólvora from

JRC.I2), but also other JRC projects within this field, currently attached to Science and Technology

Studies and the TNT Makerspace (Ispra, with Dr. Ângela Guimarães Pereira and Dr. Paulo Rosa from

JRC.I2) to the Citizen Science Platform (with Dr. Sven Schade from JRC.B.6), and to the EU Policy Lab

(Brussels, with Alexandre Pólvora and Dr. Susana Nascimento from JRC.I.2). This collaboration was

aimed to promote and advance the COST Action CA 15212, in order to combine expertise to address

questions such as how citizen science engagement and its community-building strategies can be

incorporated in policy advice and policymaking, or which issues and dimensions should be considered

for this participatory policy approach to become a reality at EU level. The medium-term objective of the

STSM is to feed into the deliverable 5: “Scientific paper to contribute to the understanding of the role of

CS for social innovation”, which is related to Task 3 of the Action’s Working Group 4: “Develop a

framework of participation based on a review of evaluation methods of the contextual and environmental

factors that mediate the effectiveness of different participatory practices.”

Summary of the work carried out during the STSM and key outputs This five-day-visit – from April 9 to 13, 2018 – was primarily a networking event with several researchers

and officers working on citizen science and public engagement in different areas at the JRC (Ispra) and

on design and policy-making at the JRC (Brussels). In Ispra, on the first day, Dr. Paulo Rosa introduced

COST Action CA15212

Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe STSM Report

Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the

European Union

3

the JRC to me and their newly started programme called ENGAGE, coordinated by Dr. Ângela

Guimarães Pereira. The programme consists of five work packages, covering topics such as the creation

of maker spaces: air quality monitoring sensors; monitoring of alien invasive species; Science and

Technology Studies; and ENGAGE Demo aimed at piloting two citizen science initiatives. The JRC.I2

group has produced several reports on citizen science and public engagement for different EU DGs.

Within this area of research, they had, for example, reviewed citizen science projects and mapped

meanings of the term citizen science and do-it-yourself-science.

Part of the time in Ispra was also used to work together with Dr. Schade on activities in progress that

can be jointly organized and – possibly jointly funded – by COST and the JRC.

In Brussels, I met Dr. Alexandre Polvora and Dr. Susana Nascimento from JRC.I.2. Polvora’s work is

centred on participatory and distributed science and technology models, and collaborative and

transdisciplinary frameworks for policy advice. Nascimento has worked on citizen engagement in

science and policymaking.

Dialogue Session at the 2nd European Citizen Science Conference I worked with Dr. Schade on the Dialogue Session we will run together at the 2nd European Citizen

Science Conference. CS needs to be considered beyond the narrow framing of public engagement in

science to redirect research agendas towards issues of concern to citizens. During the dialogue session,

we intend to explore with the audience the possibilities of CS to reinforce public engagement and expand

the model of CS to support policy making and promote societal relevant outcomes. We brainstormed

ideas for our pitch presentations. Expected outcomes include so far:

• Generate curiosity and awareness of participants to be involved in social innovation.

• Explore ideas to elicit interest and check possible grounds for follow-up activities in the context

of the Action.

We planned to report the results of the dialogue session during the COST Action MC Meeting on June

6th, 2018, during the 2nd European Citizen Science Conference.

WG4/WG3 Training School (Jointly organized by JRC and COST)

Dr. Schade and I discussed to better focus the aim of a training school planned to take place in January

2019, during the 3rd Grant Period. The aim of this training school would be about exploring and learning

about citizen science as a possible approach to involve citizens in the development and deployment of

effective solutions to pressing problems with social value (social innovation). We reworked the initial

idea we had for the training school and, in the next few months, we will continue to work together to

define the programme in detail and identify suitable lecturers within the JRC and outside.

WG2 Workshop on Human and Machine Learning

Dr. Schade and I had a Skype initial call with Dr. Laure Kloetzer (Chair of the WG2) to discuss the

possibility for an exploratory workshop, possibly in the form of a scientific day on the engagement of

human and machines and its implications for citizen science. The topic is relevant both for the Action

and the JRC. In the field of CS, citizen scientists have helped the development team of EyeWire (a

game) to design advanced artificial intelligence and computational technologies for mapping the

connectome. Within the JRC, research is being undertaken on machine learning and human behaviors

within the HUMAINT project (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/science-update/humaint-project). Dr. Schade

will prepare an initial scoping document to be shared with Laure Kloetzer and I. The document will serve

to plan the event that should take place at the JRC in Ispra by the end of this year

Presentation to the JRC.I2 group

COST Action CA15212

Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe STSM Report

Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the

European Union

4

I made a presentation titled Participation in Citizen Science: A Thorny Issue (slides available here) to

the JRC.I2 group and other researchers from other units in Ispra. The main goal of the presentation was

to problematize the notion of participation, which is very uneven as participation in CS has not reached

a broad cross-section of society yet. I suggested that we borrow ideas from the Scandinavian tradition

of Participatory Design to explore conceptually the challenges related to participation and to design for

participation.

I also made this presentation in Brussels to the Policy Lab | Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Policy Unit. The presentation was well received and elicited several comments from the attendees about issues related to the future role of artificial intelligence in citizen science (for example, algorithms for classification) and the apparent lack of citizen science project in eastern European countries.

Meeting about #Blockchain4EU

With Dr. Alexandre Polvora and Dr. Susana Nascimento, I attended a meeting on the project

#Blockchain4EU at the consultancy firm Nehamn, specialized in human-centred design, in Brussels.

#Blockchain4EU: Blockchain for Industrial Transformations is a forward-looking sociotechnical

exploration of existing, emerging and potential applications based on Blockchain and other Distributed

Ledger Technologies (DLTs) for industrial / non-financial sectors. It is coordinated by the EU Policy

Lab/Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Policy Unit of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in

collaboration with the Innovation Policy and Investment for Growth Unit of the Directorate General for

Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship & SMEs (DG GROW). (source:

https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/eupolicylab/tag/blockchain4eu/). The project is at the intersection of science

and technology studies, foresight and horizon scanning, and participatory and generative design.

The meeting was an opportunity for me to see the importance of information visualization for policy-

making and of bridging the gap between “words” and policy-making. Making analysis more digestible to

people through data visualization is an important element in complementing decision-making. This has

implications for citizen science as well, in that citizens may develop a better understanding and new

questions aided by good data visualization, which in the end may lead to stronger engagement.

Wider benefit of the STSM to the Action: Outcomes so far:

• From the scientific point of view: this STSM has served as a further opportunity to foster

collaboration between Action WGs and researchers and officers at a leading European research

centre.

• The applicant had the opportunity to become more familiar with initiatives on public engagement

and citizen science conducted at the JRC and learn about the theoretical ideas, and get

acquainted with perspectives and ideas on engagement and participation, especially regarding

dimensions of participation, representation of interests, agency and transformative power of

research.

Short-term Scientific Mission, COST Action 15212

Participation in Citizen Science: a Thorny Issue

Marisa Ponti, University of Gothenburg I acknowledge the support of the COST Action 15212 and

Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg, Sweden.

A p r i l 1 0 , 2 0 1 8

Directinvolvement ofthe public in scientific research

Projects that involve citizens often continue over longer periods and have a larger scale and scope than professional scientists could typically achieve alone, because of the short-term nature of scientific research funding.

2

What is Citizen Science?

Different forms of collaboration

Shirk et al.’s Taxonomy (2012):

Claims about Citizen Science

• It may acceleratescientific research

• It may bridge betweenscience and the public

An essential premise is that CitizenScience projects draw in a large numberof people from diverse areas of society

ow can OER supportCitizen Science?

Participation

Power Law

Sauermann & Franzoni(2014): Most participants contribute

only once and with little effort, leaving the top 10% of contributors responsible for almost 80% of total classifications.

Still a small area The best estimate of the number

of Europeans involved in CS is not more than 2 million.

Failure to reach a broad-cross section of society

• High-level of education• Interest in science• White people with

above average income• Older, white and

educated men

Consequences

• Failure for research to recognize pressing problems

• Solutions may fail to gain acceptance

Warning:Conditions for broad

participations in designing projects are

as important as creating artifacts themselves

Public Participation asContested Concept (Gallie, 1956)

INTERNALLY COMPLEX ALTHOUGH THE WORTH IS DEFINED FOR THE WHOLE

AMBIGUOUS AND VAGUE TERM

VALUED ACHIEVEMENT

Five fundamental aspects of PD (Halskov & Hansen, 2012)

Aspect Description

Politics People who are affected by a decision should have an opportunity to influence it

People People play critical roles in design by being experts in their own lives

Context The use of “situation” is the fundamental starting point for the design process

Methods Methods are means for participants to gain influence in design processes

Product The goal of participation is to design alternatives, improving quality of life

References

• Shirk, J. L., H. L. Ballard, C. C. Wilderman, T. Phillips, A. Wiggins, R. Jordan, E. McCallie, M. Minarchek, B. V. Lewenstein, M. E. Krasny, and R. Bonney. 2012. Public participation in scientific research: a framework for deliberate design. Ecology and Society 17(2): 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04705-170229

• Gallie, W.B. (1956). Essentially contested concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society New Series, vol. 56, pp. 167–198.

• Sauermann, H., & Franzoni, C. (2014). Crowd science user contribution patterns and their implications.PNAS 112(3), 679–684. Doi: 10.1073/pnas.1408907112.

• Halskov, K. & Hansen, N.B. (2014). The diversity of participatory design research practices at PDC 200-2012. International Journal of Human Computer Studies.

• Wynn, J. (2017). Citizen Science in the Digital Age. Rhetoric, Science, and Public Engagement. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press.