Is Citizen Science a Remedy for Inequality?

Abstract

Is public engagement with science an effective response to threats against science? One form of public engagement—citizen science—might be especially useful for addressing issues of inequality that threaten public support for science. Citizen science is both public participation in the scientific process and public participation in the governance of science. In principle, citizen science empowers marginalized communities to participate in the scientific process, using the authority of science to challenge government, industry, or other institutions that exploit imbalances of social power. In practice, however, citizen science can also be used to redirect attention away from actions that address inequalities and to reinforce modes of knowledge production that exclude alternative ways of knowing relevant to those without social power. Thus, rhetoric about citizen science as a solution to threats against science needs to be tempered with attention to specific contexts and opportunities.

Inequality persists in a large citizen science programme despite increased participation through ICT innovations

“…Finally, we lack long-term information on a number of other factors that may be temporally dynamic and influence participation over the course of a long-term citizen science programme, e.g. individual and community-level motivations, education, socio-economic status, language and access to natural areas (Pateman et al 2021 ; Lewenstein 2022 ). In fact, motivational and demographic factors are rarely documented and published over the course of a citizen science programme, but important to monitor diversity in citizen science (Pateman et al 2021 ).…”

Meet the Medicines—A Crowdsourced Approach to Collecting and Communicating Information about Essential Medicines Online

“…Crowdsourcing allowed the team to gather a larger, more diverse set of data than otherwise possible through insourcing methods, while simultaneously expanding the roles of citizen scientists in the project. The idea of fostering diversity in crowdsourcing and citizen science has been discussed at length both as a method for promoting data diversity and as an opportunity to advance public inclusion in science [35,36]. While this commentary presents one project and its multiple uses of crowdsourcing, this idea can be translated to other projects to advance and diversify scientific research.…”

The Art of Human Participation Against Aertifical Intelligence With Geospatial Information System in the Tourism Industry

“…For example, in Europe and America North, according to the laws of many municipalities and local governments, it is necessary to have a certain amount of public participation in decision-making processes. According to a survey, public participation relies on information, a public solution and its effective feedback through public meetings, which is still one of the most specific forms of public participation (Goreis and Voracek, 2019;Larrain and McCall, 2018;Lewenstein, 2022).…”

“…Public participation in the development of a large-scale or small-scale municipal plan has certain objectives, such as mechanizing the planning process, helping to transfer or disseminate ideas, and supporting the decision-making process. According to traditional methods, public participation in urban planning and management includes neighbor announcements, interviews, exhibitions, public meetings and focus group discussions, and public questions via telephone, e-mail, teleconference or public meetings (Lewenstein, 2022). Based on the opinion of the researchers, the success that is the result of planning, designing and deploying the spatial information system based on national participation is effective in increasing the level of public effectiveness.…”