Question of the Month – a method to instigate co-created citizen science

Activity: Talks and presentationsTalk or oral contributionScience to Science

Description

Citizen science can take many forms. If citizen science is co-created, participants do not only take part in research but also in the decision-making processes in a project. Among the first decisions in a citizen science project is the selection of a topic of interest. In co-created citizen science, this decision is made jointly by the researchers and the participants. This paper elaborates on the method of the Question of the Month as a format in which members of the public can raise a question in a field that might be answered in a project. The ways to collect these questions for the Question of the Month are, among others, an online form to submit the question accompanied by a social media and/or traditional media campaign, workshops or personal dialogue with people interested in the topic from which the questions are harvested by researchers or community members. The Question of the Month can serve as an impetus and starting point for co-created citizen science, in which citizens do not only raise the research questions but conduct research on the questions themselves. This paper also addresses the pitfalls of this method that requires a strong commitment by all persons involved. Moreover, this method also faces challenges originating from the perception of the participants on the one hand, and the attitudes of the researchers on the other. Reasons for this may be ivory tower thinking by researchers and the participants’ impression that academia is being detached from the needs of people and their everyday lives. Therefore, the Question of the Month is an important means to collect not only the concerns of people in a certain field of research but also as a way to bridge ‘two worlds’. Illustrated by a citizen science project in the field of linguistics, this paper investigates the conception, failures and assumptions in implementing the idea of the Question of the Month.
Period2 Sep 2021
Event titleESPAnet Conference 2021: Up for the Future? Social policies in challenged societies
Event typeConference
LocationBelgiumShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational