Gamification in citizen linguistics illustrated by linguistic treasure hunts

Description

Gamification is a means to increase the engagement of participants in citizen science projects. For example, treasure hunts can help to increase motivation of the participants and the quantity of data. Applied to linguistics, a group of people follows different clues in an urban environment. To win a prize, the groups additionally take and annotate pictures of written language, for example on billboards, shop signs or graffiti with an app as they follow the series of clues. The groups must annotate the pictures according to predefined rules and criteria to ensure a certain level of data quality. They receive more points for certain data criteria to meet the research priorities of the academics. While gamification in the form of linguistic treasure hunts made linguistic landscaping more fun for the participants, researchers benefit from the data gathered and analyzed to study the salience and visibility of different languages and language varieties.

Period	2021
Event title	Citizen Science Virtual 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	UnknownShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International