Citizen Science and Public Policy-Making During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Citizen Data Science as an Extended Peer Community

Abstract

Drawing upon the COVID-19 crisis in Denmark, this paper investigates the relationship between public policy-making and Citizen Science as conducted by citizens analysing and visualizing COVID data through social media. We consider whether this form of Citizen Data Science (CDS) can help inform public debate and influence policy-making during a crisis. Specifically, the paper explores the CDS community, its contributions and policy interactions. Though it is difficult to demonstrate a direct causal relationship between CDS and specific policy decisions, we conclude that CDS can act as a form of ‘extended peer community’ where new developments are reflected upon, discussed and supplemented by a larger and not professionally involved audience. In this way, CDS represents a potentially-valuable input to policy. However, it also raises new questions and challenges for policy-making, not least in terms of policy makers’ capacity to identify useful inputs and act upon a broader range of expertise.