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1LS 3041: The Natural Sciences and the Liberal Arts
Course Theme: “Public and Participatory Science in the 21st Century”
Political Ecologies of Citizen Science Project
Introduction
“Citizen Science” broadly refers to public participation in scientific research, typically through onthe-ground data collection. These projects are usually developed and overseen by scientists, who
have researched and defined particular environmental problems worthy of study, with citizens
collecting the data (Dickinson et al., 2012; Priest, 2013; Wals et al, 2014). In contrast, communitybased participatory research involves scientists, social scientists, humanists, and even art-based
researchers who work collaboratively with the community through a community-driven (versus
expert-driven) project (Pandya, 2014). Sometimes Citizen Science projects are grassroots and
community-based and sometimes they are not. As you can imagine, both kinds of projects have
strengths and weaknesses but all contribute to our understanding of how science and society
interact.
What You’ll Do
To begin your work, you need to select an organized Citizen Science effort to join. You can start
by browsing any of the following websites, many of which provide search engines to find projects:
● Zooniverse: https://www.zooniverse.org/
● “Scientific American’s” Citizen Science: https://www.scientificamerican.com/citizenscience/
● Scistarter: http://scistarter.com/
The kinds and frequency of data collection are going to vary by project, but you should plan on
collecting data at least once per week for at least 10 weeks if you are making observations in the
field, devoting 20-30 minutes/week to data collection. If you are participating in an online project
where you watch videos or tag images, you need to spend a minimum of 20-30 minutes per week on
your project for at least 10 weeks as well. You need to figure out a good way to track and organize
these data right from the beginning. Every project is different, but does it make sense to create
tables or graphs? Should you write notes as you make your observations? Some projects will help
you keep track of your data but many do not. Therefore, you need to keep track of it yourself the
moment you begin data collection.
Everyone in the class needs to post to the Discussion Board forum called “Citizen Science
Project Check In” no later than the end of Week #2 to get your project approved.
Your “final product” for this project is going to consist of a written analysis.
Report (40% of grade): (50 points total; 8-10 pages in length, not counting visuals or references)
● Introduction: Introduction and brief background of your Citizen Science effort (5 pts)
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● Data Presentation and Analysis: Presentation of the data you collected. You need to
present your data visually in graphs, tables, charts, or images and provide a thorough written
description of the data, including an analysis of what they mean. (10pts)
● Project Analysis: Address points #1-4 below; you should have section subheadings for
each of the points so your paper is organized as follows (“Citizen Science and Knowing
Nature”; “Citizen Science and the Political”; “Citizen Science is Scaled”; “Citizen
Science Produces, Applies, and Circulates Scientific Knowledge.” In this analysis,
please cite 3-5 sources. You can use some of the sources we accessed in class, such as
Dickinson et al. (2012), Pandya (2012), and Pauli (2019), as well as any of the sources
on the philosophy of science (e.g., the readings on epistemology, feminist
epistemology, and Indigenous knowledge) (15 pts)
● Reflection and Conclusion (10pts):
o What did you learn from this project, both in terms of the scientific data collection
process an in terms of the political-ecological analysis you conducted?
o Do you think that the ways in which this project teaches you to “know nature” are
valuable? In what ways might it be limiting?
o Did this project influence your understanding of and attitude toward the process of
producing scientific and environmental knowledge? In what ways?
o How do you feel about crowd-sourced data? Do you think Citizen Science efforts
can impact large-scale environmental issues in meaningful ways?
Political Ecology as a Tool to Do and Think About Citizen Science
In this project we are going to take a “political ecological” approach to understand, unpack, and
analyze just what it means to do Citizen Science. While an exhaustive review of what political
ecology is and does is clearly outside the scope of this course, we can draw on some key insights
from Mara Goldman and Matthew Turner’s Introduction to the edited volume, Knowing Nature:
Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies. Broadly, political ecology studies the
politics of environmental change. We’ve also read (or will read) the work of other political ecologists
who study a variety of issues. I’ve listed these articles/book chapters at the end of this handout for
your reference.
The four “big” ideas/questions undergirding your work with this Citizen Science project (drawing
on political ecology) are as follows:
(1) Political ecologists ask how humans come to know nonhuman nature. So, how does this
Citizen Science project teach us about—and how to organize—the world around us? More
specifically, how does your project teach you to know nonhuman nature? In our everyday lives and
experiences we learn from and “know” nature all of the time—from the food we ingest that our
bodies collectively digest with bacteria, to the trees that line sidewalks and cycle CO2 and O2 through
the atmosphere in a way that benefits organisms who must respire. A Citizen Science experience
requires us to work with our everyday world in a different capacity, by thinking and organizing
nonhuman nature differently than our regular experience. How does this work?
Consider:
– What kinds of data are you collecting?
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– How are you collecting data? (systematic observations (qualitative and quantitative), mapping
locations, taking photos, taking quantitative measurements, etc). Be specific and consider
citing some of our course readings on this topic.
– How do the project’s foci and data collection process ask you to organize the world? In
other words, why pay attention to certain kinds of organisms, phenomena, and data and not
others?
– Are you expected to take an objective or detached perspective as you collect the data? In
what ways might your own values influence the research process? Be very specific here and
consider some of the course readings on objectivity.
(2) Political ecologists ask how the production of knowledge about the environment or nature is
always political. So, what kinds of tensions, debates, and conflicts might be associated with
this project? While there are many ways to tackle and unpack this question, for the purposes of this
class you are going to examine the following:
–
–
–
Who started this project and why? (university scientists, the federal government, corporate
scientists, community groups)? You may need to email or contact the project in order to
ascertain this information—I can help you.
● What do you think their motivations were? Why this subject as opposed to others?
Is this project affiliated in some way with other projects?
Who funds this project? (volunteers who collect data typically do not get paid; however there
are often professionals associated with the project, like directors, working scientists, etc.,
who do get paid).
● Does funding drive the types of questions that get asked? How?
Consider how this project directs funds and resources to one or a few environmental
issues/problems and not others.
● Why is it important to think about this?
Whose knowledge is privileged in this project? Is yours? In what ways?
What happens to the data once you submit them? Who uses them? Why? Is it leveraged in
any way to do something practical? Do scientists use the data to publish research?
Who or what is the object of study in this project? Why?
What debates does this project enter into?
● Debates about the topic? Debates about Citizen Science?
(3) Political ecologists often ask how the production of knowledge about the environment or nature
operates through multiple scales, or, aggregate groups of people and their institution, communities,
environments, etc. So how is this Citizen Science project scaled?
In this section, you are going to draw on the work you have done thus far in questions #1 and #2.
In this context, scaled means that there are many people, living entities, material objects, social
structures, and social constructs that collectively make this project. To give you an example, Ottinger
(2010) discusses a community-based Citizen Science effort that involved regulatory standards set by
the federal (Environmental Protection Agency) and state governments (Louisiana Department of
Environmental Quality), community members in a local, grassroots group (St. Bernard Citizens for
Environmental Quality), an environmental non-profit group (the Louisiana Bucket Brigade), an
ethnographic researcher, bucket air sampler equipment residents used to monitor air quality at local
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level, mostly invisible air pollutants (chemicals), and a Shell Chemical Facility located within the
community (but keep in mind corporations also act at national and multinational levels).
–
Identify the various actors in your project. Describe their role in the project.
At what scale are they located (i.e., in terms of global, national, regional, and local scales)?
Do participating humans and environments operate at multiple scales?
Discuss how they seem to be connected; you may find a diagram or concept map useful
here.
(4) Political ecologists, especially those interested in the production of scientific knowledge, ask how
such knowledge is produced, applied, and circulated. So, in this Citizen Science project, how is
scientific knowledge produced, applied, and circulated?
In this section, you are going to draw on your own experiences collecting data, the research you’ve
done so far, and any published documents you can find—these might include scholarly research
articles, policy briefs, stories or clips from the web.
–
Who/what produces this knowledge?
How does it get “applied?”
If the knowledge is “circulated,” where does it go?
● Do scientists use it to publish research that is then used to leverage actual change?
● Which stakeholders get to use it and how?
● Does it inform or leverage policy in any way?
