Vortragsreihe

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Veranstaltungen

Activating the potential of citizen science platforms for research – the case of Bürger schaffen Wissen (31.01.2023, 13:00 Uhr)

Moritz Müller | Bürger schaffen Wissen, Germany

Bürger schaffen Wissen (Citizens create Knowledge) is the central citizen science platform in Germany and one of the largest platforms for citizen science in Europe. The goal of the platform is to inform about citizen science, to support citizen science practitioners by offering capacity building opportunities and consultation, to invite citizens to participate in citizen science projects and to contribute to the strategic development of citizen science in Germany and beyond. With its focus on community service and dissemination, Bürger schaffen Wissen has contributed significantly to the growth of the German citizen science landscape in recent years.

In our role as a hub for the German citizen science network and having collected information on more than 220 projects in Germany, we would like to further optimize the database on our platform to activate the full potential of Bürger schaffen Wissen for research on the German citizen science landscape. Following a presentation on the current state of Bürger schaffen Wissen, this talk will open a discussion on how to evolve the platform as a hub for data on citizen science projects.

The European Citizen Science Association: Citizen Science by Everyone For Everyone (17.05.2022, 13:00 Uhr)

Claire Murray | European Citizen Science Association

The European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) fosters the development and growth of citizen science in Europe and beyond. We achieve this by providing expertise and support, strengthening networks and advocacy among peers, academics and policy audiences. The ECSA team and community collaborate closely together to create new opportunities and to expand citizen science research and participation. Our work encompasses the theoretical, methodological, practical and cultural growth of citizen science. This talk will share the work of ECSA and the power of citizen science to empower us all to reach the SDGs and more.

Web-based Analytics of Citizen Science Activities - Methods and Tools (25.01.2022, 13:00 Uhr)

Cleo Schulten & H. Ulrich Hoppe | RIAS Institute Duisburg, Germany

The goal of the EU project CS Track (2019-22, “Science with and for Society”) is to investigate Citizen Science (CS) activities and practices to improve our understanding of these projects and to support future decisions in directing such projects. In addition to empirical studies based on surveys and interviews, CS Track relies on computational analytics techniques applied to digital traces of CS projects in websites and social media. For this purpose, we collect basic information on projects, aggregate metadata and further extend this information through various analytics techniques, including social network analysis, textual data mining, and discourse analysis. In a final synergetic “triangulation” step, these findings are combined and integrated with the empirical data from surveys and interviews.

The presentation will start with an introduction to computational analytics techniques and their characteristics in general. The central part will particularly elaborate on methods and tools for content analysis and the corresponding development of an Analytics Workbench. This tool gives interactive access to text mining and other analytics techniques to generate results for individual projects with the additional option to modify results as needed. The general interface is a web-based dashboard. To generate further insights on the collected data, the workbench includes network visualizations to show connections and commonalities between projects. A core function of the Analytics Workbench is the assignment of research areas and SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) to projects based Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA). ESA relies on a corpus of textual descriptions sourced from Wikipedia as a kind of ontology. Using Named Entity Recognition (NER), the workbench also identifies names of organisations/institutions, persons, or places.

The presentation will be concluded with a short overview of central research questions and strategies for the on-going triangulation work. This is intended to serve also as stimulus for a general discussion.

TeQfor1: The Assessment of Open Source Health Technologies by Citizen Science (06.07.2021, 13:00 Uhr)

Silvia Woll | KIT, Germany

The Citizen Science project TeQfor1 (Impact of technical systems on the personal quality of life of people with type 1 diabetes), funded by the Helmholtz Association, opens up the opportunity for a group of people with type 1 diabetes to scientifically investigate open source closed loop systems (OSCLS) for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. The OSCLS are developed and used therapeutically by a community of people with type 1 diabetes but are neither clinically tested nor approved. To date, there are only few scientific studies addressing them. It can be assumed that users of OSCLS have a high level of expertise on the context of application due to their knowledge about the disease and the constant therapeutic use of the systems. The basis of TeQfor1 is therefore the participation of the users in all phases of the project, from the creation of the research questions to the evaluation of the results.

Caring Communities Living Lab – A community-based participatory research project (22.06.2021, 13:00 Uhr)

Claudia Müller | Universität Siegen, Germany

The Swiss NSF-funded project "Caring Communities Living Lab" pursues the research and development of measures to support older people with care needs in the home. The project follows a community-based participatory research approach, building sustainable collaborations with citizens in three selected Swiss communities as co-researchers from the beginning. The talk presents a qualitative interview study conducted by older citizen co-researchers, which aims at a better understanding of everyday care needs in the home. In particular, challenges and benefits of participation and eye level between scientific and citizen researchers will be reflected.

Sedentäres Verhalten: Methodische Aspekte und psychobehaviorale Zusammenhänge (20.04.2021, 13:00 Uhr)

Marco Giurgiu | KIT, Germany

Körperliche Inaktivität wurde als viertgrößter Risikofaktor für die globale Sterblichkeit identifiziert. Technologische und soziale Veränderungen im häuslichen, ökologischen und beruflichen Umfeld haben zu einem zunehmend inaktiven Lebensstil in verschiedenen Kulturen und Ländern geführt. Mit anderen Worten, eine Vielzahl an Menschen verbringt einen Großteil ihrer Zeit in einer sitzenden Körperhaltung mit geringem Energieaufwand, d.h. im sedentären Verhalten. Forschungsergebnisse der letzten Jahre verweisen auf ernstzunehmende gesundheitliche Konsequenzen, die durch „zu viel Sitzen“ verursacht werden. In unserer Forschung am mental mHealth lab am KIT nutzen wir technologisch innovative Messmethoden, um Determinanten und Konsequenzen des sedentären Verhaltens im Alltagsleben besser zu verstehen. Im Detail, steht die kombinierte Verwendung von elektronischen Tagebüchern und Bewegungssensoren, sowie deren technischen Verknüpfung im Sinne von interaktiven Assessments im Fokus. Die Anwendung der innovativen Methodik im Rahmen von Ambulanten Assessment Studien ermöglicht die hochfrequentierte Erfassung in Echtzeit, die wiederum gepaart mit fortgeschrittenen statistischen Ansätzen (Mehrebenen-Modellierung), Einblicke über dynamische Prozesse im Alltag zulässt. Die Präsentation betrachtet methodische Aspekte des sedentären Verhaltens und berichtet von Alltagsstudien zur Wechselwirkung des sedentären Verhaltens und psychobehavioralen Parametern.

Giving voice to victims using science: Citizen science in the context of child protection and the participative reappraisal of traumatic events (23.03.2021, 13:00 Uhr)

Jörg Fegert | Universitätsklinikum Ulm, Germany

Listening to victims collecting their statements and thereby enabling adult victims of childhood sexual abuse to participate in a political reappraisal process in Germany was the aim of our project for the independent commissioner for questions of child sexual abuse in Germany in 2010 after a huge abuse scandal. 

We developed a critical incident reporting system (CIRS) whereby victims could anonymously provide testimonials and let policy makers know what issues were important to them. The process increased knowledge on statistically less frequent abuse constellations e. g. abuse by females. The process was supported and accompanied by a media campaign (designed pro bono by Wim and Donata Wenders and Scholz & Friends). Between May 2010 and October 2011the CIRS handled over 20.000 telephone calls and over 3.000 letters or e-mails. Two third of the calls were from victims of abuse. Finally, 4.570 victims of sexual abuse gave informed consent for using their data in the largest participative research project for and with victims of abuse. 

Since 2016 we accompany the new helpline of the independent commissioner on child sexual abuse (Data collection of more than 10.000 data records with informed consent for research). We conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses on that sample to support the political mission of the independent commissioner. After the political round table on sexual abuse with no official representation of victims the German government established an independent council of victims of abuse that is also involved in the Steering Board of this project. Official victim representatives are a very much selected sample with special abilities. Collecting the testimonials of those who aren’t usually heard in the political process contributes important aspects to the political reappraisal process and generated new hypotheses for research. A feedback loop with communication of the results is necessary to maintain participation. An integrated model and future perspectives of this approach will be discussed. 

From rags to riches: building an inter- and transdisciplinary research environment from scratch (19.01.2021, 13:00 Uhr)

Martin Mauve | HHU Düsseldorf , Germany
Tobias Escher | HHU Düsseldorf , Germany

In 2011 the success of the Pirate Party sparked the interest of several researchers at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. The idea of a "digital democracy" where everyone could easily participate in decision-making processes was fascinating not only for scholars from the areas of social sciences such as Political Science, Communication Science and Sociology, but also for colleagues from Computer Science, Business Administration and Law. While moving from mono disciplinary research to a very interdisciplinary setting was very, very exciting it did not lead to immediate success. On the contrary - we encountered a lot of skepticism and rejection both within our respective research communities and from reviewers of our joint project proposals. It was only after we also embraced transdisciplinarity – in the sense of integrating practitioners at eye level – that we were able to demonstrate successfully that we can tackle significant research challenges in a unique way. This, in turn, led to the establishment of the PhD programme on online participation, the founding of the Düsseldorf Institute of Internet and Democracy and it played a significant role in establishing the new Institute for Digitalization Research at the NRW state level.

In this talk we will report on the lessons learned during that process. We will also report on one specific research project that investigated the practical impact of online participation. In this project we conducted and evaluated an online participation processes in partnership with the cities of Bonn, Cologne and Moers in NRW. It illustrates how important – and rewarding – an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research environment is.

FridaysForFuture meets Citizen Science (15.12.2020, 13:30 Uhr)

Anna Soßdorf | HHU Düsseldorf , Germany

There has been extensive research on FFF and most studies have dealt with the activists' reliance on social media and peer networks, their limited commitment to traditional organizations, or their socioeconomic characteristics such as the strong female presence. Most findings have remained on the macro level of the phenomenon. Nevertheless more in depth micro level analyses are palpable. This research gap is where this project feeds into.

Within this citizen science project at the University of Duesseldorf scholars and local FFF activists are being brought together to target two research questions: (1) how does the local youth movement mobilize people to join the different forms of protest? (2) what specific strategies and means make the movement successful in terms of mass mobilization? The approach of the research project differs from previous methodologies by making the activists part of the knowledge producing process. The rationale behind giving ownership to those citizen scientists is that the activists are better equipped to address the relevant questions and methods than traditional scholars.

In the presentation the main pillars of the project, relevant methodological aspects of citizen science as well as first findings and lessons learnt will be discussed.

Exploring innovative approaches to data quality in online citizen science (27.10.2020, 14:00 Uhr)

Roman Lukyanenko | HEC Montréal, Canada
Jeff Parsons | Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Online citizen science – wherein scientists enlist ordinary people in the general public in scientific research projects – has been growing rapidly in recent years. Despite many successes, various challenges in citizen science remain. Among these is the need to maintain high quality data produced by often untrained and sometimes anonymous users. Data quality in citizen science has received considerable attention from the research community. However, these efforts mainly focused on few dimensions of data quality, such as data accuracy. Much less is known about other important dimensions of the data produced by citizens, such as data diversity. Data diversity is important because it facilitates repurposing of the data produced by citizens, thereby potentially contributing to discoveries. What is more, efforts that may improve data accuracy may also negatively affect data diversity. Our research seeks to establish a broad, holistic understanding of data quality issues in citizen science and investigates design solutions that are capable of simultaneously improving as many dimensions of data quality as possible. The presentation will discuss several completed and also present a number of ongoing studies that deal with the dimensions of accuracy, completeness, data diversity and repurposability of citizen science data.

Relevant reading: MISQ Paper of the Year 2019 (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.25300/MISQ/2019/14439)

Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft - starke Partner für eine nachhaltige Zukunft (23.07.2020, 9:00 Uhr)

Armin Grunwald | KIT, Germany
Oliver Parodi | KIT, Germany

Reallabore: neues Setting für transdisziplinäre Forschung

Das KIT-ITAS ist Pionier in der Reallaborforschung, die ihren Ursprung in der Nachhaltigkeitsforschung hat. Reallabore sind Experimentierräume mitten in der Gesellschaft, bspw. in einem Stadtquartier, die die Bürgerschaft zum Handeln einladen. Gleichzeitig werden die entwickelten Ideen und Maßnahmen forschend begleitet, um neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen und diese auch in andere Bereiche weiter zu tragen.

Neben einer guten wissenschaftlichen Forschung, ist es vor allem die Transformationswirkung Richtung Praxis, die ein Reallabor zu einem erfolgreichen Treiber der nachhaltigen Entwicklung macht.

Mit dem „Quartier Zukunft“ initiierte das ITAS vor über 8 Jahren einen mittlerweile wichtigen Gestaltungsraum für nachhaltige Stadtentwicklung in der Karlsruher Oststadt. Hier wird das Konzept des Reallabors in die Praxis umgesetzt, um eine lebendige Kultur der Nachhaltigkeit zu schaffen.

Ob Reparaturcafé, Kleidertausch, Urban Gardening oder die Gründung eines Start-Ups für nachhaltigen Modekonsum – die Aktivitäten, die durch das Quartier Zukunft angestoßen werden sind vielfältig und werden von einer motivierten Bürgerschaft getragen.
Für klare Aussagen zu Wirkung und Ergebnis der Initiativen ist es jedoch noch zu früh – denn Reallabore sind langfristig angelegte Räume, um systematisch einen nachhaltigen Wandel anzustoßen.

Das ITAS am KIT plant die Einrichtung weiterer Reallabore, unter anderem zu den Themen „Autonomes Fahren“ und „barrierefreie urbane Systeme“, um das erfolgreiche Konzept der transdisziplinären Forschung weiter zu entwickeln. Und auch das „Quartier Zukunft“ wird mit dem „Karlsruher Transformationszentrum für Nachhaltigkeit und Kulturwandel“ (KAT) einen Schritt weiter Richtung nachhaltiger Entwicklung in der Gesellschaft gebracht.

Dass das Konzept der Reallaboren auch in anderen Städten großen Anklang findet, zeigt die Plattform „Reallabor-Netzwerk“ auf, das vom KAT initiiert wurde. Akteurinnen und Akteuren in Reallaboren haben hier die Möglichkeit sich über Erfahrungen auszutauschen und zu vernetzen, um langfristig und nachhaltig Veränderungsprozesse erfolgreich einzuleiten.

Ein herzliches Dankeschön an Prof. Dr. Armin Grunwald und Dr. Oliver Parodi vom ITAS für diese interessanten Einblicke im Rahmen des Colloquium IISM.

Mehr über das "Quartier-Zukunft" erfahren Sie hier.

Zum "Reallabor-Netzwerk"