Citizen data: collecting and using data for societal change
Short description
In Citizen Science (CS) large amounts of environmental data is collected and classified by volunteers. The Species Observation System (SSOS) is one of the larger web-platforms in the world for CS. Currently its database encompasses over 80 million observations of Swedish flora and fauna. We have very little systematic knowledge about the actual usage of CS-data outside the scientific system. The purpose of this project is to investigate the societal usage of citizen science data in Sweden.
The Species Observation System (SSOS) is serving several Swedish public authorities and Courts as well as activists, and SSOS offers a unique possibility to investigate the societal usage of citizen science data in Sweden. The project will direct its investigations towards three thematic contexts where critical issues in relation to citizen science data become relevant:
(1) the role and importance that SSOS data attain in relation to decision-making among public authorities, (2) the issue of data quality and, (3) motivations among citizen for collecting the data. Three case studies have been selected that examine the role of citizen data in court, in environmental activism, and in the work of public authorities. By applying a mixed method approach of ethnographic methods, document analysis and web-ethnography, the project will investigate volunteer behaviours, co-operation between actors and resources to attain the quality of data, and ultimately how data are used in later stages of societal decision making.