#citscicomm Labs

The NEWSERA #CitSciComm Labs

 

Citizen science projects are a complex ecosystem: they involve communities of citizens, scientists, policy makers and industries. One of the challenges these projects face is to adequately communicate the meaningful results and high-quality scientific data they generate to the stakeholders involved; this is crucial both to get back to the citizens who participated in the project and to inform new policies and businesses.
Another key aspect of CS projects is the effectiveness of the technology they employ: there isn’t much research on how the users interact with CS apps and their role in the project success.

NEWSERA tackled these and other issues in the #CitSciComm Labs, which were the core of the entire project. The Labs involved small groups of citizen science practitioners from 39 ongoing citizen science initiatives, the NEWSERA “Pilots” (selected from the NEWSERA survey and interviews), representatives from different stakeholders groups and science communication experts: together they collaborated on new and improved strategies of communication adressed to quadruple helix stakeholders and journalists.
The presence of representatives of citizens and society in general, academic scientists, industries and SMEs, policy makers and journalists was crucial for the Labs: they had an active role in voicing their interests and necessities. This way, with the help of communication experts, citizen scientists were able to understand how to reach them and involve them in their projects.

Each Lab was focused on one specific stakeholder: 

 

HOW DO THE LABS WORK?

Each Lab consisted of a series of three co-creation workshops, that were held online and with different groups for each country involved in the project (Spain, Portugal and Italy). While the co-creation workshops were held within each group, all groups came together in common sessions to share their work and findings. To learn more about the general functioning of the Labs, watch our video animation!

The 1st round of Labs was held in 2021 and was focused on framing the needs of pilot projects, as well as those of the key target stakeholders. The 2nd round was held during the first half of 2022 and dealt with cross-cutting topics such as defining indicators of success, increasing trust in citizen-generated data and tackling misinformation. The 3rd round was held at the end of 2022 with national groups of projects meeting in Italy, Portugal and Spain.

 

RESULTS

The results of the Labs were be the basis for five Communication Blueprints, guidelines for more effective science communication strategies in citizen science projects that were produced by the NEWSERA Team and are available online on Zenodo.

Credit: NEWSERA Consortium (CC BY-SA-ND 4.0)

WATCH OUR VIDEO SERIES ON THE #CITSCICOMM LABS