On the assumption that wide awareness raising is crucial to produce virtuous changes in collective behaviors, and by sitting within the emerging Marine Social Science and Critical Ocean Geography perspective, I explore here the potentialities and limits of participatory marine knowledge creation and sharing practices (PaKCS). In natural science’s operationalization of citizen science, the possibility for participants to establish an attachment with the object of research is limited as citizens are often called to act as “sensors” for the accumulation of data. PaKCS are rather inspired by the Extreme Citizen Science approach and require a systematic knowledge production and interpretation work put forward by non-professionals, building upon the tacit knowledge of locals. The aim is to simultaneously deploy all existing communication, participation, and engagement techniques to overcome the obstacles posed by marine systems, such as their inaccessibility. Therefore, the presentation discusses how radically participatory practices mobilize social and biological scientific analytic methods for planning, realizing and communicating new perspectives and knowledge on the maritime environment. It engages with the co-design of the research process (self-managed by, with, and for citizens), including the definition of research priorities, knowledge gathering and sharing, data acquisition, elaboration, and discussion process, training and dissemination.

Tutorial/Invited: Tutorial

Primary Presenter: Chiara Certoma', University of Turin (chiara.certoma@unito.it)

Authors: