[en] Crowdsourcing is today a revolutionary phenomenon changing pro- foundly our ways of communicating and producing. This article is interested in two issues that are crucial to its development and impacts. On one hand, it in- vestigates the forms and limits of crowdsourcing-related citizen empowerment. It is less concerned by the now recognized fact that crowdsourcing is empower- ing, but rather focuses on the ways it does so and the architecture of the rela- tions between citizens, scientists and institutions in this new context. On the other, it discusses the question of credibility of data produced through crowd- sourcing. This question represents, in fact, the Achilles’ heel that destabilizes the rise of citizen power in the face of experts and institutions. In its discussion of these two issues, the article relies on a particularly interesting case study: the online platform of participatory monitoring of biodiversity in Belgium Observa- tions.be. The creation of databases is an occasion here for reflexivity, learning and mobilisation. It is also an occasion for the liberation of the lay citizen, as an individual, from the straightjackets delimiting the institutional, scientific and associative spaces where he remains a subject, a collaborator or a member – al- ways in a subordinate position. He becomes a peer producer, partner and discussant. More important, learning and action networks that develop in the platform cut transversally through the three spheres. We find unexpected and new cooperations between citizen, scientists and civil servants. Likewise, ac- tions developed through the platform, mainly reporting, counting campaigns and early alert systems attest new modes of action that transgress the functional and ontological division of the three spheres.
Research Center/Unit :
TRIANGLE - University of Lyon 2 LEMA - University of Liege Lepur : Centre de Recherche sur la Ville, le Territoire et le Milieu rural - ULiège
Disciplines :
Architecture Computer science
Author, co-author :
Farah, Jihad ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Lepur(Centre rech.sur la Ville,le Territ.et le Milieu rural)
Language :
English
Title :
Crowdsourced Monitoring, Citizen Empowerment and Data Credibility: The case of Observations.be
Publication date :
2014
Main work title :
Computational Science and its applications - ICCSA 2014
Allagui, I., Kuebler, J., The Arab Spring and the Role of ICTs: Editorial Introduction (2011) International Journal of Communication, 5, pp. 1435-1442
Aubertin, C., Boisvert, V., Vivien, F.-D., La construction sociale de la question de la biodiversité, in (1998) Natures Sciences et Sociétés, 6 (1), pp. 7-19
Bell, S., Marzano, M., Cent, J., Kobierska, H., Podjed, D., Vandzinskaite, D., Reinert, H., Armaitiene, A., GrodziŃSka-Jurczak, M., MuršIč, R.: What counts? Volunteers and their organisations in the recording and monitoring of biodiversity (2008) Biodiversity and Conservation, 17, pp. 3443-3454
Boiller, D., (2008) Viral Spiral - How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic on Their Own, , copy[at]viralspiral.cc
Bonner, D., Cooper, C., Data validation in citizen science: A case study from Project Feeder Watch (2012) Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 10, pp. 305-307. , http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/110273
Boulos, K.M.N., Resch, B., Crowley, D.N., Breslin, J.G., Sohn, G., Burtner, R., Pike, W., Chuang, K.-Y.S., Crowdsourcing, citizen sensing and sensor web technologies for public and environmental health surveillance and crisis magement: Trends, OGC standards and application examples (2011) International Journal of Health Geographics, 10 (67). , http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/10/1/67
Brabham, D., Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning Projects (2009) Planning Theory, 8, pp. 242-262
Brabham, D., Sanchez, T., Bathelomew, K., Crowdsourcing Public Participation in Transit Planning: Preliminary Results from the Next Stop Design Case (2009) TRB, , Paper presented at August 1
Brando, C., Bucher, B., Quality in User-Generated Spatial Content: A Matter of Specifications Proceedings of the 13th AGILE International Conference on Geographic Information Science, Guimarães, Portugal, May 10-14 (2010)
(1987) Our Common Future, , Bruntland Report. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Buchanan, G., Nelson, A., Mayaux, P., Hartley, A., Donald, P., Delivering a Global, Terrestrial, Biodiversity Observation System through Remote Sensing (2008) Conservation Biology, 23 (2), pp. 499-502
Callister, T.A., Media literacy: On-ramp to the literacy of the 21st century or cul-de-sac on the information superhighway (2000) Advances in Reading/Language Research, 7, pp. 403-420
Castells, M., (2012) Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, , Polity Press, Cambridge et Malden
Charvolin, F., Micoud, A., Coord, N.L., Des sciences citoyennes? La question de l'amateur dans les sciences naturalists (2007) Éditions de L'Aube, Aigues
Cohn, J., Citizen Science: Can Volunteers Do Real Research? (2008) BioScience, 58 (3), pp. 192-197
Coops, N., Walder, M., Iwanicka, D., An environmental domain classification of Canada using earth observation data for biodiversity assessment (2009) Ecological Informatics, 4, pp. 8-22
Cox, L.-P., Truth in Crowdsourcing (2011) Security & Privacy IEEE, 9 (5), pp. 74-76
Danielsen, F., Balete, D., Poulsen, M., Enghoff, M., Nozawa, C., Jensen, A., A simple system for monitoring biodiversity in protected areas of a developing country (2000) Biodiversity and Conservation, 9, pp. 1671-1705
Flanigin, A., Metzger, M., The credibility of volunteered geographic information (2008) Geo-Journal, 72, pp. 137-148
Gao, H., Barbier, G., Goolsby, R., Harnessing the Crowdsourcing Power of Social Media for Disaster Relief (2011) Cyber-Physical-Social Systems, , Zeng, D. (ed.) IEEE
Heinzelman, J., Waters, C., (2010) Crowdsourcing Crisis Information in Disaster-Affected Haïti, Special Report, , United States Institute of Peace, Washington
Hudson-Smith, A., Batty, M., Crooks, R., Milton, R., Mapping for the Masses: Accessing Web 2.0 through Crowdsourcing (2008) UCL Working Papers Series, Paper 143, , University College of London, London
Latour, B., From realpolitik to dingpolitik or how to make things public (2005) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, , Latour, B., Weibel, P. (eds.) ZKM/MIT Press, Karlsruhe
Latour, B., (1999) Politiques de la Nature: Comment Faire Entrer Les Sciences en Démocratie, , La Découverte, Paris
Latour, B., (1991) Nous N'avonsjamaisétémodernes: Essaid'anthropologiesymétrique, , La Découverte, Paris
Levrel, H., Fontaine, B., Henry, P.-Y., Jiguet, F., Julliard, R., Kerbiriou, C., Couvet, D., Balancing state and volunteer investment in biodiversity monitoring for the implementation of CBD indicators: A French example (2010) Ecological Economics, 69 (7), pp. 1580-1586
Madden, M., Fox, S., Riding the Waves of Web 2.0: More than a Buzz Word but Still not Easily Defined (2006) Pew Internet and American Life Project, , http://clearwww.co-bw.com/Ethics/ethics_Web_2.pdf
Neis, P., Zielstra, D., Zipf, A., The Street Network Evolution of Crowdsourced Maps: OpenStreetMap in Germany 2007-2011 (2012) Future Internet, 4, pp. 1-21
Ostrom, E., (1990) Governing the Commons, , Cambridge University Press
Ostrom, E., Burger, J., Field, C., Norgaard, R., Policansky, D., Revisiting the commons: Local lessons, global challenges (1999) Science, 284, pp. 278-282
Rappaport, R., In praise of paradox: A social policy of empowerment over prevention (1981) American Journal of Community Psychology, 9, pp. 1-25
Salem, B.B., Application of GIS to biodiversity monitoring (2003) Journal of Arid Environments, 54, pp. 91-114
Scholes, R.J., Mace, M., Tumer, W., Geller, G.N., Jürgens, N., Larugauderie, A., Muchoney, D., Mooney, H.A., Towards a Global Biodiversity Observation System (2008) Science, 321, pp. 1044-1045
Seltzer, E., Mahmoudi, D., Citizen Participation, Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing: Challenges and Opportunities for Planning (2012) Journal of Planning Literature, 28 (1), pp. 3-18
Surowiecki, J., (2005) The Wisdom of the Crowds, , Anchor Books, New York
Toomey, D., How Rise of Citizen Science is Democratizing Research (2014) Environment, 360. , http://e360.yale.edu/
Tulloch, D., Many, many maps: Empowerment and online participatory mapping (2007) First Monday, 12 (2). , http://www.firstmonday.dk/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1620
Whitelaw, G., Vaughan, H., Craig, B., Atkinson, B., Establishing The Canadian Community Monitoring Network (2003) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 88, pp. 409-418
Zimmermann, M.A., Israel, B.A., Schulz, A., Checkoway, B., Further explorations in empowerment theory: An empirical analysis of psychological empowerment (1992) American Journal of Community Psychology, 20, pp. 707-727