citizensocialscientist

[citizensocialscientist]

Mapping the Social Life of the City

Fantastic resource in the form of an Atlas of Social Maps of the city compiled by Social Life and SIX. The project looks at the way in which maps and mapping tools can help us understand local places and people’s everyday experiences, and find new perspectives on urban social life and social innovation in cities.

The Atlas includes a summary of the many different mapping projects that they have come across, a list of tools/methods for mapping social life, as well as a collection of other data bases such as blogs and past exhibitions concerning maps. 

The Atlas is also a “living document” so it’s possible to suggest further contributions or changes. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TGXJF2f05fTFjKFsbRp2QFmeXu-htLtEP8FqBs311tk/edit#gid=1672761053

[citizensocialscientist]

Self Tracking Citizenship blog post

I just came across a really interesting blog post by Deborah Lupton about Self Tracking citizenship which is an excerpt from her forthcoming book The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-Tracking. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about data ownership and the notion of responsible citizenship of late, particularly in terms of citizen social science, & this really resonated with me: 

“...part of the ethical practice of self-tracking, at least for some practitioners, may involve the notion of contributing to a wider good as well as collecting data for one’s own purposes. Access to large data sets – rendering these data sets more ‘open’ and accessible to members of the public – becomes a mode of citizenship that is distributed between self, community and physical environment. This idea extends the entrepreneurial and responsible citizen ideal by incorporating expectations that people should not only collect their own, personal information for purposes of self-optimisation but should also contribute it to tailored, aggregated big data that will benefit many others, in a form of personal data philanthropy: self-tracking citizenship, in other words.”

https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/self-tracking-citizenship/

[citizensocialscientist]

Citizen Social Science at Manchester Policy Week 4th Nov 2015

I spoke at an event organised by Liz Richardson on Citizen Social Science as part of the Manchester Policy Week on 4th November 2015. The event was focussed on the potential uses of Citizen Social Science to help tackle complex policy challenges. The session aimed to answer such questions as: what is Citizen Social Science? How does it work in practice? Is it good research? What difference can it make? Do ordinary people want to be social scientists?

Laura ffrench-Constant blogged about the event more fully here. 

I found the event particularly interesting as each exemplar project was surprisingly different, despite all clearly coming under the banner of Citizen Social Science. Which got me thinking...what distinguishes Citizen Social Science from Participatory Action Research?

[citizensocialscientist]

1st ECSA International Conference 2016

Citizen Science – Innovation in Open Science, Society and Policy 19–21 May 2016 | Berlin

The ECSA Citizen Science Conference 2016 aims at policy makers, science funders, scientists, practitioners in the field of citizen science, Non-Governmental Organisations and interested citizens. This trans-disciplinary conference will highlight, demonstrate and debate the innovation potential of citizen science for science, society and policy and its role within open science and innovation. The three-day conference will provide the arena to showcase how both new and traditional ways of citizens working with scientist can enable transformative potential to enhance science-policy and social impact, scientific advancement, scientific literacy and empowerment. Of particular importance will the role of citizen science within wider agendas such as ensuring open science and innovation, and progressing towards responsible research and innovations.

http://www.ecsa2016.eu

Important Deadlines

November 20, 2015: Call for Sessions opens December 14, 2015: Call for Sessions closes January 2016: Call for abstracts opens

[citizensocialscientist]

ECSA General Assembly

I was lucky enough to go to the European Citizen Science Association General Assembly in Barcelona at the end of October 2015. It was a fantastic experience to meet so many people in the citizen science community and to hear about some of the fascinating citizen science projects under way.  

The experience also allowed for some space to reflect on Citizen Science and some of the key challenges the community is facing in its development. Topics that came up more than once included: the relationship with, and role of, science; issues of data quality and research design; data rights, ownership and IP; and also how to formalise the informal experiences participants have when they take part in citizen science activities.

The experience also lead me to think a lot more about the implications for Citizen Social Science. Why has there been so little uptake of Citizen Social Science whereas the Citizen Science movement seems to be somewhat unstoppable in these present times? Is it beneficial to make such clearcut distinctions between Citizen Science and Citizen Social Science?

In definitional terms, ECSA’s ten principles of Citizen Science is a really useful document for further thinking. 

Els Encants Vells (“The Old Charms”) market, Plaça de Les Glories, Barcelona. Adjacent to the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, where the ECSA GA took place.

[citizensocialscientist]

The time is NIGH for CitSocSci

Really interesting blog post from a year ago by Dr Gerben Moerman at the University of Amsterdam about the lack of social science projects on the citizen science roster. The post goes on to question why is there a lack of projects which involve lay people in the interpretation of social data.

“Citizens are not trained in a sociological gaze, let alone in Foucauldian, or ethnomethodology inspired interpretative actions. They will bring in lay perspectives, and we need to deal with those.”

http://socialtheoryapplied.com/2015/01/03/time-citizen-science-social-sciences/

[citizensocialscientist]

Upcoming Conference:

Doing Research on Participation: Methods and data for understanding everyday participation

25th-26th of May, 2016. Manchester, UK

This conference forms part of Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values, a five-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Creative Scotland. The UEP project is exploring the dynamics of, and stakes attached to, informal and ‘unofficial’ participation practices, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between participation and place, and on mixed methods approaches to representing and understanding cultural participation.

http://www.everydayparticipation.org/doing-research-on-participation-call-for-papers/

Key dates:

Deadline for abstract submission: January 31, 2016.

Notification of acceptance of abstracts: February 22, 2016.

Deadline for delegates’ registration: May 13, 2016.