Göbel, C;
Nold, C;
Berditchevskaia, A;
Haklay, M;
(2019)
How Does Citizen Science “Do” Governance? Reflections from the DITOs Project.
Citizen Science: Theory and Practice
, 4
(1)
, Article 31. 10.5334/cstp.204.
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Abstract
Citizen science (CS) is increasingly becoming a focal point for public policy to provide data for decision-making and to widen access to science. Yet beyond these two understandings, CS engages with political processes in a number of other ways. To develop a more nuanced understanding of governance in relation to CS, this paper brings together theoretical analysis by social science researchers and reflections from CS practice. It draws on concepts from Science and Technology Studies and political sciences as well as examples from the “Doing-It-Together Science” (DITOs) project. The paper develops a heuristic of how CS feeds into, is affected by, forms part of, and exercises governance. These four governance modes are (1) Source of information for policy-making, (2) object of research policy, (3) policy instrument, and (4) socio-technical governance. Our analysis suggests that these four dimensions represent different conceptions of how science and technology governance takes place that have not yet been articulated in the CS literature. By reflecting on the DITOs project, the paper shows how this heuristic can enrich CS. Benefits include project organisers better communicating their work and impacts. In its conclusion, the paper argues that focusing on the complexity of governance relations opens up new ways of doing CS regarding engagement methodologies and evaluation. The paper recommends foregrounding the broad range of governance impacts of CS and reflecting on them in cooperation between researchers and practitioners.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | How Does Citizen Science “Do” Governance? Reflections from the DITOs Project |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.5334/cstp.204 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.204 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Citizen science; public engagement; public policy; governance; policy engagement |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10088734 |
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