Inclusive Science and European Democracies

Project Information

ISEED

Grant agreement ID: 960366

DOI

10.3030/960366

Project closed

EC signature date 11 November 2020

Start date 1 February 2021

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 2 723 287,00

EU contribution

€ 2 723 287,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ISEED (Inclusive Science and European Democracies)

Reporting period: 2022-02-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project uses existing experience in the field of citizen science as a tool to explore under what conditions participative and deliberative practices can be successfully implemented in democratic governance. We broadly define ‘citizen science’ as a way of producing scientific knowledge (and/or setting research agendas) that relies on the participation of citizens who are not professional scientists – individual citizens, NGOs, groups of patients, etc. – in the range of activities that enter scientific research. We therefore intended to explore the potential of scaling up from a specific area where participation is of essence to the wider picture of political participation and its consequences for democratic institutions and decision making.

The project aimed at:
- Understanding, through both a conceptual perspective and an experimental methodology, the potential role of citizen engagement in knowledge co-creation, in view of building good participatory practices
- Investigating the pros and cons of active participation in public debate in relation to the existing institutions of representative governance and in view of conceptualising an inclusive and empowered idea of ‘public sphere’.
- Developing proposals for the science and technology components of the knowledge base to serve the interests of fair and inclusive democratic societies.

More in detail, the project's objectives are the following:
O1. Specifying an inter-disciplinary conceptualisation of the dimensions and merits of good deliberative practices in relation to knowledge-based governance.
O2. Exploring through an experimental perspective and methodology the role of knowledge communication and citizen engagement, in view of building good participatory practices and envisaging a new idea of an inclusive ‘public sphere’.
O3. Investigating the correlates, antecedents and consequences of citizens’ perception of active participation in public debates and the institutions of governance.
O4. Developing proposals for the science and technology components of the knowledge base to serve the interests of fair and inclusive democratic societies.
O5. Identifying the elements of communication strategies (first and foremost the use of digital technologies) for knowledge based deliberative processes securing the inclusion of vulnerable social actors.

Actions undertaken to achieve each objectives have been implemented as followed and concluded:
O1. i) a mapping of science-informed engagement practices; ii) literature review of citizen science programmes; iii) an analysis of central concepts for citizen participation in science; iv) an assessment of citizens’ propensities towards participation.
O2. i) analysis of case studies in the field of citizen science (broadly defined) focussed on forms of participation; ii) identification of two data sets covid 19 and climate chnage) to assess several aspects of the citizens-science interaction.
O3. i) a survey to assess citizens’ preferences over characteristics of democratic decision-making processes in a hypothetical community (in particular the role of experts, politicians and citizens in those processes); ii) a survey to explore the importance and role of online media in participation and deliberation; iii) a study of the strategies of online discourse polarisation and political propaganda in Poland.
O4. sets of proposals and recommendations on how to turn the challenges emerging from doing science within citizen science programmes into an instructive lesson for the way we live and work together in our societies.
O5. setting up, testing and application of the 'argument extractor' (set of tools and methods for extracting and analysing causal statements and other forms of argumentation from social media and more generally on-line textual data).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first reporting period a number of actions were set in place in order to create a suitable framework for the work then to be pursued in year 2 and 3 (literature reviews of citizen science programmes and models of public sphere with a focus on participation, mapping of best practices of engagement, collection of data sets to be used in research, frameworks for questionnaires, surveys, interviews, etc., pre-testing of the 'argument extractor')
During the second and final reporting period, on the basis of work carried out during the first reporting period, the following actions were pursued and completed:

1. a reformulation of the concept of deliberative participation, on a 4 axes framework (epistemic, associative, digital, institutional). (WP2)
2. a typology of public engagement that identifies best practices of participation as well as obstacles to effective participation. (WP3)
3. a reformulation of the concept of 'public sphere' according to a pragmatist model which takes into account WP4 empirical findings and outputs of case studies and surveys on citizen participation in science related activities. (WP2)
4. a comparative analysis of the digital opportunities for citizen participation, including an analysis of their limitations and obstacles. (WP5)
4. an assessment of the scalability of the project results concerning citizen participation from the model of citizen science to the wider society, and the role of scientific/technological knowledge and communication for the good functioning of an inclusive and effective social/political debate. (WP6)

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project rationale was built on an original premise, which was intended to take the ongoing conversation on participatory practices beyond its present stage of discussion. The rationale consisted in exploring whether citizen science – and the way it is practised – could provide a suitable toolbox of traits and conditions for thinking over and possibly improving participatory and deliberative processes in the wider society.
In the first year we have been gathering material (conceptual and empirical) to build some of the tools as described above. In year 2 we have consolidated our conceptual and empirical understanding on how to make use of those tools to improve citizen participation in public debate, and in year 3 we have directed our research effort to scaling up from one specific field of participation (science-informed debates) to the wider context of political participation and assess/evaluate its potential in combination with traditional forms of representative democracy.

At the end of the project the following has been achieved:

- we have identified what best practices of public engagement include a substantial participatory and deliberative component, and offer some guidelines for their exploitation
- we have measured the propensity/es of citizens towards participation, allowing to build a profile of active citizenship
- we have opened a dialogue with a range of institutions, local authorities, policy making activities, where forms of deliberative participation could be tried out and tested
- we have widened the discussion on science and technology issues and practices to include citizen science literacy
- we have built a user friendly digital tool (the argument extractor) to understand and monitor ongoing debates in the public sphere.

These targets will make public and open discussion on the role of a deliberative public sphere advance in a concrete direction, and will contribute to creating forms of public engagement able to enhance and strengthen the the role and legitimization of current democratic representative institutions.

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