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Crowdsourced Monitoring, Citizen Empowerment and Data Credibility

The Case of Observations.be

  • Conference paper
Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2014 (ICCSA 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8580))

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Abstract

Crowdsourcing is today a revolutionary phenomenon changing profoundly 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 investigates the forms and limits of crowdsourcing-related citizen empowerment. It is less concerned by the now recognized fact that crowdsourcing is empowering, but rather focuses on the ways it does so and the architecture of the relations between citizens, scientists and institutions in this new context. On the other, it discusses the question of credibility of data produced through crowdsourcing. 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 Observations.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 – always 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, actions 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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liege, Sart Tilman Campus, Chemin des chevreuils 1, B52, 4000, Liege, Belgium

    Jihad Farah

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  1. Jihad Farah
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, 85100, Potenza, Italy

    Beniamino Murgante

  2. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Sanjay Misra

  3. Department of Production and Systems, University of Minho, 4710-057, Braga, Portugal

    Ana Maria A. C. Rocha

  4. DICAR, Polytecnico di Bari, 70125, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Torre

  5. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Jorge Gustavo Rocha  & Maria Irene Falcão  & 

  6. Monash University, 3800, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    David Taniar

  7. Department of Intelligent Informatics, Kyushu Sangyo University, 2-3-1 Matsukadai, 813-8503, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

    Bernady O. Apduhan

  8. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Perugia, Via Vanvitelli, 1, 06123, Perugia, Italy

    Osvaldo Gervasi

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Farah, J. (2014). Crowdsourced Monitoring, Citizen Empowerment and Data Credibility. In: Murgante, B., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2014. ICCSA 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8580. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09129-7_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09129-7_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09128-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09129-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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