Technological Foundations for Citizen Science: Evaluating CSOs Capabilities and Challenges in Poland

• In Event: Smart and civil? Civil Society role in the Context of Technological Smart City Developments

Abstract

Citizen science is a powerful social innovation fostering public participation in scientific research. It can be an important tool for fostering local engagement and create participation around research concerning local issues. As such it is often initiated by civil society organizations, especially those engaged with pro-environmental activism. However, it often requires adoption of proper technological solutions, which create challenges in terms of conducting specific projects.

According to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003) a perceived likelihood of adopting an innovation depends on four key constructs, including facilitating conditions – ‘the degree to which an individual believes that an organization’s and technical infrastructure exists to support the use of the system’ (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Facilitating conditions can be understood as compatibility of an innovation with norms, values, and believes of targeted population (Roger et al., 2020). People are more likely to adopt a technology if it feels familiar, as it is perceived as less risky. If an innovation is very different from what people are used to using, the adoption process might take longer or not be picked up at all.

In our research we studied technological solutions that CSOs working for the protection of the environment in Poland are using to implement citizen science projects. We have decided to study a wide range of CSOs, to better understand the context in which these social innovations are supposed to take place.

We interviewed 28 CSOs board representatives, managers and initiators of social movements and conducted a desk research of 65 CSOs in Poland. Every technological solution was recorded and later categorized. Altogether, we found and coded 45 different technological solutions.

Although we found that there is a great potential in citizen science (Heggen, 2013), there are also many challenges connected to the level of citizen participation (e.g., time requirements), community specificity (e.g., trust level), communication strategy, transparency and accountability in the process, as well as ethics. Our research adds one more element to this list: the technological advancement of CSOs and grassroots movements. The technological advancement of such initiatives is a key aspect in planning citizen science projects because the choice of technology depends on their digital fluency and competence in managing digital and mobile platforms.

Our study shows that although majority of CSOs see a great potential in citizen science, they are lacking proper technological solutions to implement and manage such project. Only a few organizations have run citizen science projects in the past for which they mostly used internationally recognized applications like Amber or GLOBE program. In rare cases, however, dedicated platforms were developed locally. We will discuss how these tools shaped the engagement of participants and influenced CSOs agenda and potential impact.

References:
Doyle, E.E., Lambie, E., Orchiston, C., Becker, J.S., McLaren, L., Johnston, D., Leonard, G. (2020). Citizen Science as a Catalyst for Community Resilience Building: A Two-Phase Tsunami Case Study. Australas. J. Disaster Trauma Stud., 24, 23–49.
Heggen, S. (2013). Participatory Sensing: Repurposing a Scientific Tool for Stem Education. Interactions, 20, 18–21.
Roger, E., Tegart, P., Dowsett, R., Kinsela, M.A., Harley, M.D., Ortac, G. (2020). Maximising the Potential for Citizen Science in New South Wales. Aust. Zool., 40, 449–461.
Venkatesh, V., Morris, M.G., Davis, G.B., Davis, F.D. (2003). User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View. MIS Q., 27, 425–478.

Authors

• Magdalena Roszczynska-Kurasinska, University of Warsaw

• Nina Wroblewska, University of Warsaw