Citizen Scientists Are Filling Research Gaps Created by the Pandemic


Article by  Theresa Crimmins, Erin Posthumus, and Kathleen Prudic: “The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted field research and environmental monitoring efforts worldwide. Travel restrictions and social distancing forced scientists to cancel studies or pause their work for months. These limits measurably reduced the accuracy of weather forecasts and created data gaps on issues ranging from bird migration to civil rights in U.S. public schools.

Our work relies on this kind of information to track seasonal events in nature and understand how climate change is affecting them. We also recruit and train citizens for community science – projects that involve amateur or volunteer scientists in scientific research, also known as citizen science. This often involves collecting observations of phenomena such as plants and animalsdaily rainfall totalswater quality or asteroids.

Participation in many community science programs has skyrocketed during COVID-19 lockdowns, with some programs reporting record numbers of contributors. We believe these efforts can help to offset data losses from the shutdown of formal monitoring activities….(More)”.

Data Responsibility in Humanitarian Action


InterAgency Standing Committee: “Data responsibility in humanitarian action is the safe, ethical and effective management of personal and non-personal data for operational response. It is a critical issue for the humanitarian system to address and the stakes are high. Ensuring we ‘do no harm’ while maximizing the benefits of data requires collective action that extends across all levels of the humanitarian system. Humanitarians must be careful when handling data to avoid placing already vulnerable individuals and communities at further risk. This is especially important in contexts where the urgency of humanitarian needs drives pressure for fast, sometimes untested, data solutions, and the politicization of data can have more extreme consequences for people. 

The implementation of data responsibility in practice is often inconsistent within and across humanitarian response contexts. This is true despite established principles, norms and professional standards regarding respect for the rights of affected populations; the range of resources on data responsibility available in the wider international data community; as well as significant efforts by many humanitarian organizations to develop and update their policies and guidance in this area. However, given that the humanitarian data ecosystem is inherently interconnected, no individual organization can tackle all these challenges alone. 

This system-wide Operational Guidance, which is a first, will ensure concrete steps for data responsibility in all phases of humanitarian action. It is the result of an inclusive and consultative process, involving more than 250 stakeholders from the humanitarian sector. Partners across the system will implement these guidelines in accordance with their respective mandates and the decisions of their governing bodies….(More)”

The Legal Limits of Direct Democracy


Book edited by Daniel Moeckli, Anna Forgács, and Henri Ibi: “With the rise of direct-democratic instruments, the relationship between popular sovereignty and the rule of law is set to become one of the defining political issues of our time. This important and timely book provides an in-depth analysis of the limits imposed on referendums and citizens’ initiatives, as well as of systems of reviewing compliance with these limits, in 11 European states.

Chapters explore and lay the scientific basis for answering crucial questions such as ‘Where should the legal limits of direct democracy be drawn?’ and ‘Who should review compliance with these limits?’ Providing a comparative analysis of the different issues in the selected countries, the book draws out key similarities and differences, as well as an assessment of the law and the practice at national levels when judged against the international standards contained in the Venice Commission’s Guidelines on the Holding of Referendums.

Presenting an up-to-date analysis of the relationship between popular sovereignty and the rule of law, The Legal Limits of Direct Democracy will be a key resource for scholars and students in comparative and constitutional law and political science. It will also be beneficial to policy-makers and practitioners in parliaments, governments and election commissions, and experts working for international organisations….(More)”.

Tracking COVID-19 using online search


Paper by Vasileios Lampos et al: “Previous research has demonstrated that various properties of infectious diseases can be inferred from online search behaviour. In this work we use time series of online search query frequencies to gain insights about the prevalence of COVID-19 in multiple countries. We first develop unsupervised modelling techniques based on associated symptom categories identified by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service and Public Health England. We then attempt to minimise an expected bias in these signals caused by public interest—as opposed to infections—using the proportion of news media coverage devoted to COVID-19 as a proxy indicator. Our analysis indicates that models based on online searches precede the reported confirmed cases and deaths by 16.7 (10.2–23.2) and 22.1 (17.4–26.9) days, respectively. We also investigate transfer learning techniques for mapping supervised models from countries where the spread of the disease has progressed extensively to countries that are in earlier phases of their respective epidemic curves. Furthermore, we compare time series of online search activity against confirmed COVID-19 cases or deaths jointly across multiple countries, uncovering interesting querying patterns, including the finding that rarer symptoms are better predictors than common ones. Finally, we show that web searches improve the short-term forecasting accuracy of autoregressive models for COVID-19 deaths. Our work provides evidence that online search data can be used to develop complementary public health surveillance methods to help inform the COVID-19 response in conjunction with more established approaches….(More)”.

Politics and Open Science: How the European Open Science Cloud Became Reality (the Untold Story)


Jean-Claude Burgelman at Data Intelligence: “This article will document how the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) emerged as one of the key policy intentions to foster Open Science (OS) in Europe. It will describe some of the typical, non-rational roadblocks on the way to implement EOSC. The article will also argue that the only way Europe can take care of its research data in a way that fits the European specificities fully, is by supporting EOSC.

It is fair to say—note the word FAIR here—that realizing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is now part and parcel of the European Data Science (DS) policy. In particular since EOSC will be from 2021 in the hands of the independent EOSC Association and thus potentially way out of the so-called “Brussels Bubble”.

This article will document the whole story of how EOSC emerged in this “bubble” as one of the policy intentions to foster Open Science (OS) in Europe. In addition, it will describe some of the typical, non-rational roadblocks on the way to implement EOSC. The article will also argue that the only way Europe can take care of its research data in a way that fits the European specificities fully, is by supporting EOSC….(More)”

The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions Are Self-Undermining


Paper by Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman: “Scholars and policymakers long believed that norms of global information openness and private-sector governance helped to sustain and promote liberalism. These norms are being increasingly contested within liberal democracies. In this article, we argue that a key source of debate over the Liberal International Information Order (LIIO), a sub-order of the Liberal International Order (LIO), is generated internally by “self-undermining feedback effects,” that is, mechanisms through which institutional arrangements undermine their own political conditions of survival over time. Empirically, we demonstrate how global governance of the Internet, transnational disinformation campaigns, and domestic information governance interact to sow the seeds of this contention. In particular, illiberal states converted norms of openness into a vector of attack, unsettling political bargains in liberal states concerning the LIIO. More generally, we set out a broader research agenda to show how the international relations discipline might better understand institutional change as well as the informational aspects of the current crisis in the LIO….(More)”

How public should science be?


Discussion Report by Edel, A., Kübler: “Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of what role science should play in political discourse has moved into the focus of public interest with unprecedented vehemence. In addition to governments directly consulting individual virologists or (epidemiological) research institutes, major scientific institutions such as the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina1 and the presidents of four non-university research organisations have actively participated in the discussion by providing recommendations. More than ever before, scientific problem descriptions, data and evaluations are influencing political measures. It seems as if the relationship between science, politics and the public is currently being reassessed.

The current crisis situation has not created a new phenomenon but has only reinforced the trend of mutual reliance between science, politics and the public, which has been observed for some time. Decision-makers in the political arena and in business were already looking for ways to better substantiate and legitimise their decisions through external scientific expertise when faced with major societal challenges, for example when trying to deal with increasing immigration, climate protection and when preparing for far-reaching reforms (e.g. of the labour market or the pension system) or in economic crises. Research is also held in high esteem within society. The special edition of the ‘Science Barometer’ was able to demonstrate in the surveys an increased trust in science in the case of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Conversely, scientists have always been and continue to be active in the public sphere. For some time now, research experts have frequently been guests on talk shows. Authors from the field of science often write opinion pieces and guest contributions in daily newspapers and magazines. However, this role of research is by no means un-controversial….(More)”.

The Role of the Private Sector in Protecting Civic Space


Chatham House Report by Bennett Freeman, Harriet Moynihan and Thiago Alves Pinto: “Robust civic space is essential for good governance, the rule of law and for enabling citizens to shape their societies. However, civil society space around the world is under significant pressure and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this situation.

The weakening of international institutions and democratic norms worldwide has resulted in fewer constraints on autocracies. Meanwhile, the rise of nationalism, populism and illiberalism is taking its toll on civil liberties.

The private sector is in a unique position to work with civil society organizations to uphold and defend civic freedoms and support sustainable and profitable business environments. Companies have the capacity, resources and expertise to enhance the protection of civic space….(More)”.

AI Ethics: Global Perspectives


“The Governance Lab (The GovLab), NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Global AI Ethics Consortium (GAIEC), Center for Responsible AI @ NYU (R/AI), and Technical University of Munich (TUM) Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (IEAI) jointly launched a free, online course, AI Ethics: Global Perspectives, on February 1, 2021. Designed for a global audience, it conveys the breadth and depth of the ongoing interdisciplinary conversation on AI ethics and seeks to bring together diverse perspectives from the field of ethical AI, to raise awareness and help institutions work towards more responsible use.

“The use of data and AI is steadily growing around the world – there should be simultaneous efforts to increase literacy, awareness, and education around the ethical implications of these technologies,” said Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of The GovLab. “The course will allow experts to jointly develop a global understanding of AI.”

“AI is a global challenge, and so is AI ethics,” said Christoph Lütge, the director of IEAI. “Τhe ethical challenges related to the various uses of AI require multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder engagement, as well as collaboration across cultures, organizations, academic institutions, etc. This online course is GAIEC’s attempt to approach and apply AI ethics effectively in practice.”

The course modules comprise pre-recorded lectures on either AI Applications, Data and AI, and Governance Frameworks, along with supplemental readings. New course lectures will be released the first week of every month. 

“The goal of this course is to create a nuanced understanding of the role of technology in society so that we, the people, have tools to make AI work for the benefit of society,” said Julia Stoyanvoich, a Tandon Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Director of the Center for Responsible AI at NYU Tandon, and an Assistant Professor at the NYU Center for Data Science. “It is up to us — current and future data scientists, business leaders, policy makers, and members of the public — to make AI what we want it to be.”

The collaboration will release four new modules in February. These include lectures from: 

  • Idoia Salazar, President and Co-Founder of OdiselA, who presents “Alexa vs Alice: Cultural Perspectives on the Impact of AI.” Salazar explores why it is important to take into account the cultural, geographical, and temporal aspects of AI, as well as their precise identification, in order to achieve the correct development and implementation of AI systems; 
  • Jerry John Kponyo, Associate Professor of Telecommunication Engineering at KNUST, who sheds light on the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence in Transportation System (AITS) and safety, and looks at the technologies at play in its implementation; 
  • Danya Glabau, Director of Science and Technology studies at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, asks and answers the question, “Who is artificial intelligence for?” and presents evidence that AI systems do not always help their intended users and constituencies; 
  • Mark Findlay, Director of the Centre for AI and Data Governance at SMU, reviews the ethical challenges — discrimination, lack of transparency, neglect of individual rights, and more — which have arisen from COVID-19 technologies and their resultant mass data accumulation.

To learn more and sign up to receive updates as new modules are added, visit the course website at aiethicscourse.org

Geographic Citizen Science Design


Book edited by Artemis Skarlatidou and Muki Haklay: “Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to support citizen involvement is massive; every citizen has an opportunity to become a scientist and contribute to a scientific discipline, without having any professional qualifications. With geographic interfaces being the common approach to support collection, analysis and dissemination of data contributed by participants, ‘geographic citizen science’ is being approached from different angles.

Geographic Citizen Science Design takes an anthropological and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stance to provide the theoretical and methodological foundations to support the design, development and evaluation of citizen science projects and their user-friendly applications. Through a careful selection of case studies in the urban and non-urban contexts of the Global North and South, the chapters provide insights into the design and interaction barriers, as well as on the lessons learned from the engagement of a diverse set of participants; for example, literate and non-literate people with a range of technical skills, and with different cultural backgrounds.

Looking at the field through the lenses of specific case studies, the book captures the current state of the art in research and development of geographic citizen science and provides critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area….(More)”.