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International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing

CollabTech 2021: Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing pp 67–82Cite as

Using Network Analysis to Characterize Participation and Interaction in a Citizen Science Online Community

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 12856)

Abstract

Citizen Science (CS) projects provide a space for collaboration among scientists and the general public as a basis for making joint scientific discoveries. Analysis of existing datasets from CS projects can broaden our understanding of how different stakeholder groups interact and contribute to the joint achievements. To this end, we have collected publicly available forum data from the “Chimp&See” project hosted on the Zooniverse platform via crawling its Talk pages. The collected data were then analysed using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) techniques. The results obtained shed light on the participation and collaboration patterns of different stakeholder groups within discussion forums of the “Chimp&See” project.

Keywords

  • Citizen science
  • Discussion forums
  • Social Network Analysis
  • Epistemic Network Analysis

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Notes

  1. 1.

    CS Track project: https://cstrack.eu. Retrieved: 2021-04-26.

  2. 2.

    Zooniverse: https://www.zooniverse.org. Retrieved: 2021-04-26.

  3. 3.

    Chimp& See Talk Pages: https://talk.chimpandsee.org. Retrieved: 2021-04-10.

  4. 4.

    Epistemic Network Analysis, Wisconsin Center for Education Research: https://www.epistemicnetwork.org. Retrieved: 2021-04-26.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially funded by the European Union in the context of the CS Track (Grant Agreement no. 872522) under the Horizon 2020 program. This document does not represent the opinion of the European Union, and the European Union is not responsible for any use that might be made of its content. We thank all CS Track team members for the fruitful interactions that facilitated this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICT Department, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Ishari Amarasinghe, Patricia Santos & Davinia Hernández-Leo

  2. RIAS Institute, Duisburg, Germany

    Sven Manske & H. Ulrich Hoppe

Authors
  1. Ishari Amarasinghe
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  2. Sven Manske
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  3. H. Ulrich Hoppe
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  4. Patricia Santos
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  5. Davinia Hernández-Leo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ishari Amarasinghe .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Davinia Hernández-Leo

  2. School of Creative Science, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Prof. Reiko Hishiyama

  3. Department of Management Control and Information Systems, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Gustavo Zurita

  4. Human-Computer Interaction Group, University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Benjamin Weyers

  5. Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Dr. Alexander Nolte

  6. Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Hiroaki Ogata

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Amarasinghe, I., Manske, S., Hoppe, H.U., Santos, P., Hernández-Leo, D. (2021). Using Network Analysis to Characterize Participation and Interaction in a Citizen Science Online Community. In: Hernández-Leo, D., Hishiyama, R., Zurita, G., Weyers, B., Nolte, A., Ogata, H. (eds) Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing. CollabTech 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12856. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85071-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85071-5_5

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