A new paper by the NEWSERA Team was just published on the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM)! The article “Citizen science and participatory science communication: an empirically informed discussion connecting research and theory” was authored by Paolo Giardullo and Federico Neresini (University of Padova), Esther Marín-González and Cristina Luís (FCiências.ID), Joana Magalhães and Rosa Arias (Science for Change).
The article analyses the communication channels and strategies used by 157 citizen science projects across Europe, collected during a survey published at the beginning of the NEWSERA project.
From the analysis, it emerged that the CS projects interviewed understand communication activities primarily as dissemination. This approach, however, underestimates one of the great potentials of citizen science: that of being a tool for promoting encounters with both project participants and other potential target groups.
Citizen Science is believed to contribute significantly to the democratisation of science, engaging non-scientists in scientific research. Participatory approaches to science communication share the same interest through public participation and public engagement. In the attempt to connect these two debates both theoretically and empirically, we provide an analysis of the communication tools and strategies used by 157 Citizen Science projects across the EU, UK, and Switzerland. Our analysis reports that the CS projects surveyed tend to interpret communication as a disseminating activity, rather than as a tool to promote appropriate communication-based encounters with both project participants and other potential target audiences.
Read the full article in open access on JCOM.
