Developing good methods after Fukushima

• In Event: Citizen Science as Method - I

Abstract

This paper examines the role of method in shaping citizen science after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster of 2011. While multiple and different scholars have discussed and investigated the role of citizens in shaping data on radioactive contamination for the past 10 years with a particular focus upon people and technology, little has been known about the role of method in shaping their citizen science practices. Indeed, method is likely to be less visible than data and sensors. In order to validate any scientific claim, it is thus fundamentally important to communicate methods to audiences in an effective way. This paper sheds light upon the rhetorical role of method in differentiating a citizen science practice from other citizen sensing practices after Fukushima. More specifically, this study examines how Minna no Date Site (or Collective Database of Citizen’s Radioactivity Measurement Labs, MDS) constructed and communicated its data production method to its target audience in a historical context. MDS is one of the most active grassroots citizen science projects in Japan and effectively explains its data production method for the general audiences. Based on textual analysis and ethnography, this paper examines the development of MDS’s data production method in relation to other methods, and highlights the rhetorical role of method in shaping MDS as a case of citizen science practice in Japan. In doing so, this paper seeks to contribute to the fields of citizen science and citizen sensing research and communication studies in Japan and elsewhere.

Author

• Yasuhito Abe, Komazawa University