Empowering Deaf communities in Greece through citizen social science
Stefania Oikonomou
Aug. 21, 2024, 12:01 p.m.
Author: Stefania Oikonomou, Web2Learn
As the issues of “inclusion” and “accessibility” become more investigated and practised among the citizen science community within and beyond Europe (Benyei et al. 2023; Paleco et al. 2021), new insights and observations are generated in terms of methodologies, tools and levels of civic engagement.
In this framework, motivated to introduce citizen social science as a participatory and empowering means for the benefit of Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) citizens of Thessaloniki, Greece, we organised a series of physical workshops in collaboration with the Association of the Deaf of Northern Greece.
A series of inclusive citizen social science experimentations
From December 2023 to February 2024, we hosted 4 co-creative workshops in which DHH participants learnt about citizen social science and reflected on its value for the social wellbeing of their community. Through this experimentation, a plethora of participatory approaches and tools were used to gather, showcase and make us reflect on DHH participants’ insights and experiences in doing citizen science.
From mapping plant biodiversity (December 2023) through the iNaturalistGR app and setting up a dedicated iNaturalist project group (http://tiny.cc/DHHiniNaturalistGR), to co-creating a zine (January 2024) and a poem in Greek Sign Language (February 2024) on the value that citizen science brings to their community, DHH participants shared their views on barriers and opportunities that make citizen science inclusive and accessible to the Deaf.
Moreover, to ensure DHH voices on citizen science are documented and shared in wider audiences, we called Italian graphic designer, artist and climate activist, Alice Toietta who engaged in remote live sketchnoting, to produce a drawing depicting DHH participants’ experiences in doing citizen science.
The workshops were part of the European Citizen Science project (ECS) Applied pilots on citizen inclusion.
Our forthcoming paper
Designing and implementing these citizen social science workshops with the DHH community in Greece was an enriching experience characterised by changes in research approaches, perceptions and tools. Thus, we share key reflections and insights generated by this transformative process in our forthcoming paper titled “(Re)designing a citizen social science project: A case study with Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals”.
The paper builds on the ECS pilot experience as well as in previous work in citizen science we undertook with the DHH community that has been shared in a joint paper (Oikonomou, Zourou, Czeglédi, Mihok, 2024).
Our work with the Deaf community in Greece keeps going: Acting4DHH
Motivated by the positive impact and feedback received from DHH participants, our collaboration in citizen social science with the DHH community continues in our Acting4DHH project!
The “Citizen social science for the benefit of the Deaf community” project (Acting4DHH) is funded under the IMPETUS Accelerator program and is part of the community-driven citizen science projects. In Acting4DHH, a series of citizen social science actions will be carried out to foster inclusion and accessibility by strengthening DHH-Hearing collaboration as a means of awareness raising, advocacy and empowerment.
Stay tuned for more news on the upcoming Acting4DHH citizen science actions!
This article is written together with Katerina Zourou, Web2Learn
References:
Benyei et al. (2023). Challenges, Strategies, and Impacts of Doing Citizen Science with Marginalised and Indigenous Communities: Reflections from Project Coordinators. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 8(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.514
Oikonomou, S., Zourou, K., Czeglédi, A., & Mihok, B. (2024). Citizen social science: Two case studies with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing communities. 16th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies (EDULEARN24), Palma (Spain). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13218853
Paleco C., et al., “Inclusiveness and Diversity in Citizen Science”, in: Vohland K. et al. (eds) The Science of Citizen Science, pp 261–281, Springer, Cham. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_14
More news on the Acting4DHH project: https://web2learn.eu/portfolio/acting4dhh_impetus-accelerator/