This report aims to enhance our understanding of stakeholder mapping for co-created citizen science initiatives. It presents and discusses findings from an international two-day stakeholder mapping workshop with researchers, event organizers, communication experts, and artists realizing citizen science activities. Participants identified examples of co-creation in their work and mapped stakeholders for three co-creation initiatives from the "Doing It Together Science" project. For each case, we provide an overview of the stakeholder groups involved and the lessons derived from identifying actual and potential stakeholders in different phases of each activity and using different ways for mapping them. We demonstrate that not only stakeholder mapping can be diverse, but it may take different angles depending on the characteristics and project timescales, nevertheless adding significant value to any project. We argue that a better understanding of stakeholder involvement may contribute to more effective stakeholder communication, more successful implementation, and a greater impact for citizen science initiatives.
Citizen science has become an umbrella term that encompasses a growing range of activities, actors, and issues. This chapter examines the potential of citizen science to generate transformative knowledge and argues that civil society organisations (CSOs) are key actors in this regard. However, the roles of CSOs are neglected in the literature on citizen science. We turn to the traditions of community-based research and participatory action research to learn more. With two case studies on health and safety, we show how transformative knowledge enables concerned communities to claim their rights and enriches scientific knowledge generation. Through a socio-historical analysis, we find three main roles grassroots CSOs take on in participatory research: (1) a technical role in the production of data and knowledge; (2) a governance role in the deliberation on research activities and risk assessment; and (3) an advocacy role by campaigning for transformative knowledge. These roles determine the ability of grassroots CSOs to generate legitimacy and rely on CSO members belonging to different spheres of society, scientific skills, and access to marginalised communities. Finally, we discuss the conceptual and practical challenges of accounting for CSOs’ roles in order to build a more just and transformative future through citizen science.
2 December 2019 in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice