Shut up and take my environmental data! A study on ICT enabled citizen science practices, participation approaches and challenges

Abstract

Citizen Science initiatives have been around since the 20th century in numerous fields, from astronomy to health monitoring. In recent years, social changes mediated by the development of information and communication technologies have pivoted new types of civic actions, which have enabled an expansion in the breath of citizen science applications. This civic technology has become a genuine interactive and inclusive opportunity for engaging citizens in the continuous collection of data relevant to science, governance, businesses, communal living, as well as individual concerns. This article presents the practices, trends and challenges of 108 ICT enabled citizen science projects. In addition, we present a palette for participation in ICT enabled citizen science that depicts the shapes civic participation is currently taking in different contexts. We discuss the potential uses of this palette for improving the engineering of ICT citizen science platforms to better fit the needs of volunteers and build opportunities for active engagement. Keywords— ICT; citizen science; civic technology; participation; technology use; practices; challenges EPiC Series in Computing Volume 52, 2018, Pages 270–288 ICT4S2018. 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainability B. Penzenstadler, S. Easterbrook, C. Venters and S.I. Ahmed (eds.), ICT4S2018 (EPiC Series in Computing, vol. 52), pp. 270–288