Rethinking Citizen Science through doing Citizen Science
Brian Callahan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;
James Dylan Rees, Rensslaer Polytechnic Institute
Boston 2017: Design and Planning
Citizen Science is a topic of growing interest among both STEM researchers and STS scholars, the latter of whom have offered critiques of the term “citizen science” as well as its practice. Among these questions are the following: who decides which science gets done? How is citizen scientific knowledge created, and who gets to play what role? How is attribution given for different types of work performed in the citizen science space? Does traditional academic science offer good models for citizen science practices, or must citizen science devise new structures from the ground up? In our workshop we will create a small participatory citizen science project, devising a methodological bridge between science/engineering and STS. The team members will be given scientific and engineering instruments and will then conduct research on their immediate environment, then have a dialogue about the research process and how the participants should receive credit. This workshop aims to be a first step for moving away from making critique and into doing citizen science.
