After 3 years of research, the NEWSERA project has endedThe project’s final conference was held on March 29, 2023, at BIP Meeting Centre in Brussels, Belgium. The event was organised in a hybrid format, with about 50 participants meeting in person – including NEWSERA partners, representatives from the Pilots projects involved in the Labs, invited speakers, and participants not involved in the project – and live streaming on the NEWSERA YouTube channel

 

The NEWSERA final conference and results

The conference was introduced by featured talk by Aleksandra Hebda and Vita Crivello. Then, the NEWSERA Consortium members discussed the achievements of the project and presented the NEWSERA Blueprints on innovative citizen science communication. These documents are the results of the learnings of the CitSciComm Labs: collaborative and participatory spaces where 39 citizen science projects (the NEWSERA Pilots), came together with invited stakeholders from the quadruple helix model (citizens and society at large, academic scientists, policymakers and industry and SMEs), and science and data journalists as well as other science communication professionals. The CitSciComm Labs offered the opportunity to cover capacity building and training gaps, such as those related to cross-cutting and emerging issues that affect science communication in and from citizen science projects, but also scientific projects in general: participatory and co-design methodologies, impact assessment, ethics and the spread of misinformation, communicating in social media, visual storytelling and digital narratives techniques such as the ones covered by data journalism.

From this experience we have gathered our learnings in multiple documents that we hope can inspire the broader citizen science and science communication communities, first of all the five Blueprints with and for each of the quadruple helix stakeholders and science and data journalists. During the final conference, these documents were presented with the participation of representatives from the NEWSERA Pilots, who were instrumental in their creation. 

Download the Blueprints for Citizen Science Communication

 

After the Blueprints, the NEWSERA Consortium presented the other main outputs of the project: the second Policy Brief, which assesses the main findings and impacts from the NEWSERA project as well as policy recommendations in science communication of citizen science initiatives, and the Guide of Science Communication in citizen science projects and citizen science journalism, a must-have tool for all those who want to start or rethink their own communication strategies.

Download the Policy Brief and Guide of Science Communication

 

Moreover, the NEWSERA final conference featured further discussions into the concepts of citizen science communication and citizen science journalism, and presentations of fellow EU-funded projects ENJOI, COALESCE, IMPETUS, and ECS.

The participants at the end of the conference at BIP Meeting Centre.

 

The DATA4CitSciNews exhibition

After the conference, NEWSERA partners and representatives from the Pilots celebrated the end of the project at Au Bassin. 

At the venue, Science for Change set up the DATA4CitSciNews exhibition. Along some of the exhibition modules previously shown in Barcellona, the exposition featured new ones. For example, an interactive installation presenting the data journalism stories that resulted from a pairing program between citizen science Pilots and journalists, conducted by NEWSERA as a result of the CitSciComm Lab on Journalism. The pairing program resulted in articles published on different media outlets across Europe, shining a light on the impact that participatory research can have on local issues.

Visitors to the DATA4CitSciNews exhibition at Au Bassin.

 

Learn more about NEWSERA and its results

Watch the video of the NEWSERA Final conference

 

 

All images are by the NEWSERA Consortium (CC BY-SA-ND 4.0)