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Supporting climate action through digital education
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1.1 What is citizen science?

Citizen science has been defined in various ways. A common definition positions it as a partnership between citizens and scientists to conduct research using standardised protocols. Citizen science projects exist in multiple fields including biology, conservation, biodiversity, climate research, geography, social sciences and health, with natural science, social science and geography being the most common areas of focus (Haklay et al., 2021).

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Figure 1 Citizen science projects exist in many fields, including conservation
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This is a photograph of a man removing rubbish from a lake.

Figure 1 Citizen science projects exist in many fields, including conservation

Typically, citizen science projects involve individuals in large-scale data collection, identification or analysis. Pocock et al. (2014) suggest that citizen science projects necessarily involve both learning and engagement, stating that:

Engagement alone is not citizen science. Perhaps you have an important message to convey but with no need to gather data. There are many examples of engagement working really well to raise awareness of a particular issue by communicating with many people without it being citizen science.

(Pocock et al., 2014)

Figure 2 collates possible levels of public participation in citizen science projects.

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Figure 2 Levels of participation in citizen science (Kythreotis et al., 2019, p. 5).
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A table entitled ‘Levels of participation and engagement (adapted from Sui et al., 2013)’. An arrow passes from Level 1 at the bottom of the table towards Level 5 at the top. This arrow is accompanied by the text: ‘Increasing levels of citizen participation and engagement’. Level 1 is labelled ‘Crowdsourcing’, Level 2 is ‘Distributed Intelligence’, Level 3 is ‘Participatory Science’, Level 4 is ‘Extreme Citizen Science’ and Level 5, which appears in parentheses, is ‘Citizen Social Science’. A series of bullet points sit alongside the levels, but they are not allocated precisely to each one. Six bullet points span the lowest four levels, from the bottom upwards these are: Volunteered computing; Citizens are sensors; Voluntereed thinking; Citizens as basic interpreters; Participation in problem definition and data collection; Collaborative science-problem definition, data collection and analysis. One bullet point is separate from others and is associated with Level 5: Citizens as key agents of research, action AND policy change at ALL levels of engagement and scales of decision-making process.

Figure 2 Levels of participation in citizen science (Kythreotis et al., 2019, p. 5).