During the months of October and November 2022, NEWSERA conducted the third and final round of the CitSciComm Labs.
This final round was dedicated to showcasing best practises, outputs and outcomes from the NEWSERA Pilots, and to drafting the Communication Blueprints, a series of guidelines for more effective science communication strategies in citizen science projects that draw from the experiences that projects matured during the course of the Labs.
While the first two rounds of Labs were conducted remotely, thanks to the easing in COVID restrictions we were finally able to meet and co-create in person, with three national groups meeting in Bologna (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal) and Barcelona (Spain).
The third round of CitSciComm Labs
The Portuguese group kickstarted the third round on October 20th. It was a very lively and participated session, with participants from 8 pilot projects who contributed to the drafting of the Communication Blueprints with valuable information and experiences.
Participants during the Lab in Lisbon.
On October 21st was the turn of the Italian group, with participants from 6 pilot projects, who reported their enthusiasm about participating in NEWSERA and being able to innovate and expand their views about how to communicate citizen science. During the co-creation of the Communication Blueprints, one of the topics projects focused on was inclusivity, especially in regard to disabilities and marginalised groups.
The Italian group during the Lab in Bologna.
The Spanish group met on November 3rd, with participants from 6 projects taking part in the activity. The Lab also saw the participations of stakeholder representatives of the public and third sectors, who participated in the co-creation activities to provide pilot projects with their perspective.
The Lab in Spain.
The Data Journalism Lab
At the end of November, NEWSERA also carried out the final workshop in the context of the Data Journalism Lab, dedicated to exploring ways for citizen science initiatives to partner with data journalists and their methods to maximise their communication impact.
On November 28th, NEWSERA and fellow EU-project ENJOI partnered to host DATA4CitSciNews, a conference exploring the synergy between data journalism and citizen science, especially to tackle the issue of misinformation. After the morning conference, participants from NEWSERA Pilots and journalism experts met during the Data Journalism CitSciComm Lab “The way to go: final recommendations to efficiently engage science and data journalists for wider impact in CS projects”.
After a presentation of the projects involved, participants discussed hopes and expectations about the collaboration between citizen scientists and journalists, as well as ways to find synergies and start new collaborations.
The Data Journalism Lab in Barcellona.
Read more about the CitSciComm Labs and follow NEWSERA on Twitter to get updates on our Communication Blueprints
All photos by the NEWSERA consortium; images can be reused under the CC BY-SA-ND 4.0 license.
