Responsible and Inclusive Citizen Science. Comparing Initiatives and Assessing Impacts

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.