Citizen science has a problem with engaging diverse participants, with a growing number of studies showing those most marginalised in society, who could benefit most from citizen science activities, are the least likely to participate. The full implications of this lack of diversity for what citizen science can achieve remains unexplored.
In this webinar, supported by the ECSA and Living Knowledge Equity, Inclusion and Empowerment working group, Rachel Pateman shared her work from a recent Citizen Science: Theory and Practice article, 'Citizen Science: Pathways to Impact and why Participant Diversity Matters':
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Together with Sarah West, they created a comprehensive list of 70 proposed benefits, outcomes, and impacts of citizen science. They used this list to construct 9 pathways to impact and explored how a lack of diversity in citizen science participants can cascade through these pathways, affecting the overall ability of citizen science to achieve its myriad potential impacts and further entrenching disparities in society.
This talk shared insights from this work and included an active discussion on the authors' call for 'greater imagination in exploring, testing, and sharing ways in which barriers to participation can be understood and overcome to open citizen science up to all and to achieve its potential.'
