Citizens participation in Science, Technology and innovation policies

SUSANA FINQUELIEVICH

Paris

Conferencia; on and Knowledge for All, Emerging Trends and Challenges; 2013

UNESCO

It has already been proven that citizens are not just data providers for e-Citizen science projects.  Citizen volunteers participate in the extended scientific process. They help analyze data gathered by professional researchers. They design, build and operate their own instruments to gather data for their own experiments or as part of a larger project. At policy making level the citizen volunteer is engaged in true policy-making decisions that have technical or scientific components, working alongside research scientists in the democratic and policy process (Lewenstein, 2005). While we have not found such eCS projects that include citizen scientists in the design of scientific policies at national or regional levels, we have witnessed how citizens can influence international and national Science and Technology policies through representative NGOs, such as in the WSIS process. Which is the role for citizen scientists in the WSIS + 10 process?