10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17532
This contribution develops from the panel titled “Responsible and inclusive citizen science: comparing initiatives and assessing impacts” organized for the VIII STS Italia Conference. We conceived our panel as a place to gather experiences and perspectives about the study and assessment of inclusiveness, effectiveness, and impact of Citizen science (CS) initiatives. A better understanding about CS, even taking into a perspective for policy-oriented interventions, may intercept crucial issues about participation and engagement into science and technology. These issues are getting increasingly explored but research about how and, moreover, what to assess as the positive outcome of CS is still in its infancy. The original idea was to build upon experience and methods to develop a common reasoning, but the discussion went beyond our expectation, elaborating the value of participation beyond the pure enlargement of the number of participants into CS activities. Accordingly, this paper explores the variety of notions of participation, citizenship, and democratization of science entailed in the idea of assessing participation and inclusion as addressed during the track.
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Responsible and Inclusive Citizen Science. Comparing Initiatives and Assessing Impacts
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Conference Reflections
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Joana Magalhães
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Responsible and Inclusive Citizen Science. Comparing Initiatives and Assessing Impacts
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                                                                    Conference Reflections
                                                                                                 133




Responsible and Inclusive Citizen
Science
Comparing Initiatives and Assessing Impacts

   Paolo Giardullo                              Rosa Arias              Leire Leguina
        University of Padua                    Science for Change       Spanish Foundation for
                                                                        Science and Technology
                                                                                (FECYT)
                                                 Joana
                                                Magalhães
                                               Science for Change



     Abstract: This contribution develops from the panel titled “Responsible
     and inclusive citizen science: comparing initiatives and assessing impacts”
     organized for the VIII STS Italia Conference. We conceived our panel as a
     place to gather experiences and perspectives about the study and
     assessment of inclusiveness, effectiveness, and impact of Citizen science
     (CS) initiatives. A better understanding about CS, even taking into a
     perspective for policy-oriented interventions, may intercept crucial issues
     about participation and engagement into science and technology. These
     issues are getting increasingly explored but research about how and,
     moreover, what to assess as the positive outcome of CS is still in its infancy.
     The original idea was to build upon experience and methods to develop a
     common reasoning, but the discussion went beyond our expectation,
     elaborating the value of participation beyond the pure enlargement of the
     number of participants into CS activities. Accordingly, this paper explores
     the variety of notions of participation, citizenship, and democratization of
     science entailed in the idea of assessing participation and inclusion as
     addressed during the track.

     Keywords: Citizen science; public engagement; impact assessment;
     inclusivity.

     Submitted: November 30, 2021 – Accepted: January 31, 2022

     Corresponding author: Paolo Giardullo, Department of Philosophy,
     Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Via Cesarotti 10-
     12, 35123, Padova, Italy. Email: paolo.giardullo@unipd.it




TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
12 (2) pp. 133-140 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                    2021
134                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)

1. Introduction

     Talking about Citizen Science (CS) often refers to non-experts that vo-
lunteer into data collection. Supporters of CS are largely confronted with
the issues of reliability of CS-generated data produced with techniques and
methodologies that encourage and sustain ongoing participation necessary
for a project’s realization.
     Current debate about CS is increasingly engaging with the issue of the
assessment integrating it to the array of challenges that are already on the
table (e.g. quality of scientific activities – Vohland et al. 2021). Since assess-
ment is the issue of defining tools for measuring and giving account of the
impact of a certain activity, its presence is the signal of a mature contribu-
tion into the debate (Wehn et al. 2021). Indeed, assessment for CS aims to
go beyond pure speculation about the claims for effective public engage-
ment. Already in 2016, the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act
(CCSA) intended to “encourage and increase the use of crowdsourcing and
citizen science methods within the Federal Government to advance and
accelerate scientific research (…)” (US House of Representatives 2016).
     Moving from such praise for offering valuable contributions to
knowledge creation, focusing on the assessment is about to become a spe-
cific and urgent necessity, not only in the US but to the whole CS commu-
nity. Indeed, the Ninth European Framework Programme, labelled Hori-
zon Europe, clearly indicates for applicants to address societal needs and
suggests considering different approaches to public engagement; plus,
there is an explicit mention to Citizen Science. In doing so, the European
Commission embraces the current success of such a catchy label; indeed,
the participation into scientific activities by non-experts is one of the main
features of CS. Being considered as a brand-new opportunity for public
engagement, supported by the diffusion of Information Communication
Technologies (Wynn 2017; Haklay 2015), as well as an established tradi-
tion in environmental monitoring (Bonney et al. 2016), the general tone of
the debate around CS agrees in its great potential. As such, the growing
community of scholars, practitioners and theorists that supports CS ac-
tively started interrogating themselves about the tools and strategy to effec-
tively assess it.
     The thematic session we proposed to the VIII STS Italia conference
titled “Responsible and inclusive citizen science: comparing initiatives and
assessing impacts”, addressed exactly those issues in order to bring forward
the discussion and complementing it with an alternative perspective, which
can enrich the debate about the relationship between science and society.
With this short resume the aim is to explore the variety of notions of par-
ticipation, citizenship, and democratization of science entailed in the idea
of assessing participation and inclusion: this is the challenge we addressed
as convenors for our track. The present paper gives account of the main
topics emerged during the session that further complexified the topic of
assessment, reconfiguring the issues of inclusiveness, engagement and the
Giardullo et al.                                                          135
political value of CS. Before going through them, we will first summarize
the main promises of CS for engagement, by accounting for the themes
emerged during the debate and listing the main issues connected to the
urgency of assessment.


2. Setting up the Scene: Citizen Science and its Promises
for Public Engagement
    There is not a unique CS definition (Haklay et al. 2021). There is a wide
array of practices that can be listed as CS and at the same time, CS as a
topic is open to a heterogeneity of practices characterised by several levels
of engagement aligned with participatory research. To give some general
coordinates, many agrees on the idea that Citizen Science consists in some
kind of activity oriented to data collection supporting professional scien-
tists in their research (Bonney et al. 2009); other scholars look at Citizen
Science as an attempt to enter the agenda of science policy typically re-
tained as dominated by a logic other than one of citizenry (Irwin 1995).
These two sides of CS are particularly famous (Kulleberg and Kasperowski
2016) and co-exist in the debate; they are rarely considered as opposed
perspectives, rather they are literally interpreted as two sides of the same
coin (Cooper and Lewenstein 2016). Indeed, as recently reported (Strasser
et al. 2019), CS has the potential to fruitfully address the rhetoric of open-
ness and democratization of science in a threefold way: first, CS is pre-
sented as a trigger to foster public engagement in order to make knowledge
creation process more open towards societal needs, in coherence with a
dialogical approach between scientific institutions and society at large; sec-
ond, even though not all CS activities have primarily an educational goal,
many theorists and practitioners promote it as a way to foster scientific lit-
eracy for those who have been engaged in activities within a specific CS
project; third, by being engaged into some kind of scientific activity, a vol-
unteer would also learn about the scientific method as well as critical think-
ing and should be consequently more positively oriented towards science
as an institution. The second and the third promises derive from the de-
mocratization thesis, which should be “more politically palatable than the
previous autocratic or dictatorial regime of science” (Mirowski 2018, p.
177). The potential gains of CS for knowledge production and scientific
literacy have been positively assessed when directly analysed in specific
contexts (Bonney et al. 2016). However, knowledge improvements about
certain topics do not necessarily demonstrate a more democratic turn; Mar-
tin (2017), in her analysis about the composition of volunteers in a CS pro-
ject in Australia, for instance, questioned the presumption of CS as a tool
to enrol people that are not already “engaged” with science; indeed, in that
case volunteers’ average profile tends to be a highly educated one and thus
easily stands out in some scientific subjects. For this reason, the oppor-
tunity to provide insights for marginalised or normally excluded groups is
136                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
not guaranteed. CS per se does not avoid typical barriers in engagement
and this should not be overlooked. The same applies to increasing scientific
literacy: not all the projects include it as an aim (Bonney et al. 2016) and
are mainly concentrating efforts in coordinating volunteers for data collec-
tion (Hecker et al.2018); furthermore, even though the increase in scientific
literacy can be declared as a main objective, CS projects are not equipped
for assessing its long-term effects. Finally, the fact that we can apply tech-
nologies and methods to support participation (Newman et al 2012; Wynn
2017), it does not automatically imply a contribution into the democratiza-
tion of science (Felt and Fochler 2010).
    Here we convey that it clearly emerges the need to address the different
facets of assessing CS projects.


3. Elaborating Issues of Impact Assessment

    Research about how to effectively assess CS is still in its infancy. As
reported by Wehn et al. (2021), even though there are some reflections
linked to single projects’ perspectives, the literature is quite sparse and vast.
Indeed, it should be acknowledged that talking about impact assessment
may embrace several areas of interest that require methods for a compre-
hensive oriented data collection approach (Giardullo et al 2021).
    Being this said, there is wide room for reflection about CS features es-
pecially concerning inclusiveness, effectiveness and impact of CS initia-
tives. Our track aimed exactly at taking stock of experiences about the sub-
themes related to CS impact assessment, such as: measuring and comparing
inclusiveness across initiatives; defining useful criteria for the selection of
both qualitative and quantitative indicators; tracking specific connections
with the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) pillars and, relatedly,
how to address gender balance within these initiatives. The discussion in-
volved experiences or research about CS activities, and an audience that
actively participated in the conversation further expanding the scope as
convenors we originally imagined. A key element that emerged almost im-
mediately is the repurposing of the two coexisting sides of CS: fully funded
top-down projects and the grassroots ones. These two perspectives did not
come out of the blue but rather represented the research topics provided
by the session participants: a combination of research experiences about
engagement into the analysis of CS, both from the perspective of institu-
tional projects and from self-organized communities that promote local
and sometimes trans-local mobilization, especially in the case of environ-
mental conflicts. Such a state of affairs echoes issues related to the engage-
ment of indigenous into data collection campaigns in those areas so im-
portant for biodiversity and climate change in Global South areas. Often
promoted by researchers from universities coming from Global North
these research programme may encourage participation of communities
Giardullo et al.                                                             137
traditionally excluded from scientific research, nonetheless it is uncertain
if it can actually drive to a more open way of producing scientific
knowledge and empower people. The risk of reproducing bias and power
asymmetries is likely if researchers do not deal with them directly (Young
and Gilmore 2017).
    The conversation during the session allowed us to consider exactly the
ambivalent role of inclusivity of CS in a complementary way.
    On the one hand, both research experiences by CS projects and analysis
provided by scholars from a top-down perspective approached the assess-
ment of tools for engagement: how they work and how they do so, for in-
stance checking the profile and composition of volunteers. Therefore, the
efforts aim at understanding whether strategies to create opportunities for
enlarging the array of people involved into the creation of scientific
knowledge are working. Indeed, many of the issues that emerged reflected
gender segregation, education and social class inequalities that are well-
known for science. The suggestion to concentrate on the outcomes, mean-
ing on the gains obtained or missed, compared to the aims of the project,
rather than on outputs, is shared by most participants as a necessity in or-
der to synthesize what a CS project can obtain.
    On the other hand, analysis of grassroots projects, made visible to par-
ticipants how inclusion is a debatable issue. Indeed, for example, grass-
roots projects that react by collecting data as evidence of an environmental
emergency affecting their lives, may do so in contrast or as an addition to
official environmental monitoring agencies. In this sense, these self-orga-
nized groups for data collection cannot be inclusive: first, because they typ-
ically start activities in response to a fallacy in the official data, which they
either do not longer trust or do not consider reliable; second, because, es-
pecially in local environmental conflicts, being inclusive may enlarge too
much the spectrum of their protest, exposing them to the risk of not being
able to manage proficiently their efforts.
    Therefore, inclusiveness turned to be a matter of concern in an unex-
pected way for a European/Global North context. It further reflects the
two coexisting sides of CS but, in a sense, it complexifies the whole concept
of inclusiveness itself. The narrative of being quantitatively inclusive and
diverse in the context of top-down CS projects shows only a facet of the
story. Indeed, as we learned through the confrontation and the debate with
the participants of our session, inclusiveness cannot be taken for granted
as a topic with an univocal value. Different experiences that may fall under
the label of Citizen Science may interpret differently the issue of inclusive
participation into their activities.
138                                                           Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
4. Conclusion

     As the reader should have noticed by going through our contents’ re-
sume for the “Responsible and inclusive citizen science: comparing initia-
tives and assessing impacts” session, organized for the last STS Italia Con-
ference, we went well beyond our expectations. Indeed, the debate trig-
gered by the contributions of the participants and audience overcame the
more technical and methodological issues. The many facets of impact as-
sessment for Citizen Science once put on the table promoted a valuable
discussion that provided an alternative perspective on inclusiveness and
participation: the two dimensions typically assumed as desirable outcomes
for a CS project. However, the discussion provided a twist to the concept
driving to a more thorough analysis. Certainly, by deconstructing those
concepts, the discussion provided interesting theoretical elements based
on the collective re-elaboration of the empirical experiences brought by the
participants.
     Therefore, if CS cannot be taken for granted as a coherent phenomenon
for the engagement of non-experts that take part into some kind of scien-
tific research activities, the same applies to inclusiveness and participation.
Potentially, an access into the governance of environmental issues (the
main domain amongst the many presentations) as well as into policy for
research can be obtained by CS projects that are not inclusive. Rather than
being exactly the opposite, grassroots projects may be able to gain visibility
into a political debate much more than welcoming forces from the institu-
tions or from other groups. Such a perspective on inclusiveness is intri-
guing. While promoters of the mainstream narrative of CS as a method
insist on the opportunities to enlarge participation and to promote engage-
ment of non-experts, grassroots experiences, even though not always suc-
cessful at this, configure the notion of inclusiveness in a more blurred way.
Almost paradoxically, the highest aspiration of CS labelled as the “democ-
ratization thesis'', supports a more political value of inclusion fulfilling the
principle of participatory turn into science policy (Strasser and Haklay
2018). However, quoting again Mirowski (2018), such a democratization
may be obtained precisely without following the idea of inclusiveness in a
blind fold way. The inclusion of a wider and wider array of social actors
into such processes is at the core of many funding schemes. Indeed, most
publicly funded projects for technoscientific innovation expressly require
strategies of public engagement. However, our panel deconstructed such
an idea, pushing on the table of impact assessment of CS projects an inter-
esting research question: in order to be politically sounding do we need to
be necessarily inclusive?
Giardullo et al.                                                                 139
Acknowledgements
    This paper is partly supported by the project NEWSERA, which has received
funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro-
gramme under Grant Agreement No 873125. We acknowledge the participants of
the “Responsible and inclusive citizen science: comparing initiatives and assessing
impacts” session and the audience that contributed to the fruitful debate.


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