Message posted on 16/01/2022

CfP "Inclusion and Exclusion in Citizen Science", STS Graz 2022, Austria, 2-4 May 2022

Dear colleagues,

There is only little time left to submit an abstract for the panel “Inclusion and Exclusion in Citizen Science” at the STS Graz 2022 Conference in Graz, Austria (2-4 May 2022). The deadline is 21 January 2022. You can upload your abstract proposal at https://www.conftool.com/sts-conference-graz-2022/.

Best regards, Michael

Panel organizers: Michael Strähle & Christine Urban (Wissenschaftsladen Wien - Science Shop Vienna)

Associated with promises of inclusion and sometimes the democratisation of research processes, citizen science is a highly normatively charged term. These promises often go hand in hand with the optimistic claim that citizen science is per se anti-elitist and anti-traditionalist (Haklay, 2013; Nascimento et al., 2018; Kimura, 2016) and stands for openness, civic education – and indeed inclusion (Sauermann & Franzoni, 2015; Schrögel & Kolleck, 2019). According to Kimura & Kinchy (2016) the promises and expectations associated with citizen science often contradict each other, therefore citizen science cannot live up to all the promises attached to it. Basically, it is largely unclear which promises of citizen science regarding inclusion and democratic participation can be fulfilled, since despite its increasing popularity, there is no agreement on what the term encompasses: auxiliary activities in scientific projects, project-supported school lessons, participating in the shaping of research policy, making computing capacities available, amateur science and more. To date, there has been little systematic research on who participates in citizen science projects (See, 2016; Pandya & Dibner, 2018; Burgess et al., 2017), however, according to Pandya & Dibner (2018), cumulative effects in favour of middle-class individuals are also likely to be evident in citizen science. Seen in this light, it is difficult to answer the question of how inclusive citizen science is. How, then, can we generally verify the promises of some of its proponents that citizen science is inclusive?

This panel brings together researchers investigating the nexus of scientists and publics in open science, citizen science and public engagement in science. Potential questions include:

  • Who is actually involved in citizen science activities? What characterises these participants? Who are the “citizens”?
  • In what roles are different participants presented by project owners? What people are presented?
  • When it comes to decision-making in research or agenda-setting in science policy, when is it desirable and when is it not desirable that citizens are involved? When would it give concerned groups a voice, when would it allow powerful groups to influence research disproportionately?

The panel invites contributions that offer theoretical perspectives on inclusion and exclusion in citizen science as well as empirical studies on the panel topic.


EASST's Eurograd mailing list Eurograd (at) lists.easst.net Unsubscribe or edit subscription options: http://lists.easst.net/listinfo.cgi/eurograd-easst.net

Meet us via https://twitter.com/STSeasst

Report abuses of this list to Eurograd-owner@lists.easst.net

view as plain text

EASST-Eurograd RSS

mailing list
30 recent messages