Date and time: 26th March 2026; 11:00 – 11:45 AM (CET) – Learning while doing: Communication facilitators and barriers in a transboundary citizen science campaign
The CLEANFOREST webinar series is hosted by COST Action’s Young Researchers community for all interested researchers and practitioners, usually during the second and fourth week of every month.
We are honored to announce that for the twenty-ninth event in the series, we will be joined by Tsipe Aavik from the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Estonia. A short summary of her talk is given below.
Scaling up citizen science across countries is not only a scientific effort, but also a huge communication experiment. In this talk, I reflect on lessons learned from the pan-European campaign Looking for Cowslips, which engaged participants in 31 countries in plant observations. I provide insights into what enables and what constrains effective communication in transboundary citizen science. Based on interviews, questionnaires and discussion groups with campaign co-organisers, we identify key facilitators and barriers encountered across diverse European regions. Communication proved particularly challenging for researchers, who often lack time, resources or training for sustained and intense public engagement. At the same time, success depended not only on ecological aspects of the focal species but also on socio-cultural contexts, including national traditions of citizen science, local knowledge systems and varying levels of environmental awareness. Our results highlight the critical role of collaboration, particularly between academic institutions, environmental NGOs and national co-organisers, in successfully engaging the public. Our case study demonstrates that scaling citizen science across borders requires context-sensitive communication strategies tailored to regional environmental and socio-cultural conditions.
Deadline: please sign up via the registration link above BEFORE the webinar.
Contact:
- Presenter: Tsipe Aavik tsipe.aavik@ut.ee
- Webinar convenor: Andrei Popa popa.andrei.dorna@gmail.com
- Webinar co-convenor: Jakub Jeleń kuba.jelen@wp.pl