Throughout my training as a social scientist, I have returned to the question of how community activists use science and technology to address public problems. My projects have focused on do-it-yourself mesh networks in German refugee camps but also community archiving in the global anti-plastics movement. What connects these cases of civic technoscience are the many different kinds of expertise and technical infrastructure that are needed to make complex economic, environmental and public health problems visible. I have also learned that academics, especially at public universities, can use community-focused approaches to help build civic research and data infrastructures moving forward.
From 2020–21, I joined the Research Justice Shop (RJS) as a fellow, eager to gain more experience in the development of community-based research projects. Alongside my colleague David Bañuelas (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology), we partnered with the local advocacy organization Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ). Our task was to analyze a community science organizing model that OCEJ had developed from a recently completed study of soil lead contamination.
Quickly, we learned that exposure to lead in Santa Ana has many dimensions. Considered by some as the new face of California – due to its progressive Latinx population and local city council – the city is also dealing with both lead exposure and poor preparation for dealing with future climate risks. The high lead levels were first publicly discussed by journalist Yvette Cabrera, who published an article in ThinkProgress. Shortly after, Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ) partnered with other activist groups but also academic researchers at UC Irvine to expand the soil sampling using more reliable equipment. The findings would then be used to push for policy changes, focusing especially on contested sections of Santa Ana’s updated general plan.
For our analysis, we interviewed people who had been closely involved in the study’s design, data collection and publication, but also joined a bi-weekly sub-committee focused on the soil lead campaign. The goal was to draft a guideline document that would spell out the approach further, so it could be communicated to similarly impacted communities and funding agencies.
Below, I share three short observations about the soil lead campaign, which due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we engaged with only virtually. Unlike the finished report that we submitted, I highlight my own perspective as an anthropologist interested in the design of civic information systems for environmental data justice.
- Prioritizing open-access journals
During many of the early soil lead subcommittee meetings, new members (including ourselves) had to be informed about the dynamics and scope of Santa Ana’s soil lead problem. As is common, OCEJ organizers gave us an overview through slideshow presentations and news articles. However, at some point I was surprised to learn that the original study was behind a paywalled journal, owned by the commercial publisher Elsevier. Why would the findings of a community-based research project, which included community members as its co-authors, not be made publicly available?
As many will already know, the issue points to the political economy of publishing in academia. At the time, the University of California, like other institutions around the world, were involved in a two-year boycott against Elsevier. Only a few months later, in Spring 2021, Elsevier and the University of California agreed on an open access deal. However, many of the articles, including the soil lead study, remain to be integrated into the agreement, which is currently set to last for at least four years.
In the meantime, OCEJ makes sure to present key findings and graphs of the study on their own website. Though a feasible workaround, it also means that members without institutional support (and other stakeholders) might have to make a greater effort in order to access the research. Therefore community-based research should – whenever possible – be published in an open access journal.
- Countering research fatigue through open data sharing and infrastructure
Working towards a guidebook, David and I conducted literature reviews about community-based science projects, as well as interviews with participants who had carried out the soil lead study. While everyone was open to talk to us, we also ran into difficulties when explaining the point of our research project. One member, for example, mentioned that they had just recently participated in a survey and weren’t quite sure why they were being interviewed about the soil project again.
While we tried to explain our approach — that the interviews would help us understand the dynamics of a community science project we ourselves did not take part in — I also took this mild refusal as indicative of research fatigue. With this term, social scientists have described increased disengagement of historically disadvantaged populations (including those facing environmental injustice) who neither receive fair compensation nor see positive changes related to the research in their communities. While the Research Justice Shop did provide compensation in the form of gift cards, the reaction of the interviewees paired with my experience from other civic data projects left me with questions about how our community science project could be documented in more open and sustainable ways.
Here, I take inspiration from Angela Okune, a PhD colleague in UC Irvine’s Anthropology department. Okune studies qualitative research and data sharing politics in Kenya, extending from her own experience of being an “over researched” member at one of Nairobi’s well-known tech-hubs. Notably, Okune has set up a digital workspace called Research Data Share (RDS) to share back interview material with research partners, but also collaboratively develop a growing set of analytic research questions about decolonized data sharing in Kenya.
To figure out our own data practices, I suggested we try out the Disaster STS Research Network, an instance of the Platform for Experimental and Collaborative Ethnography (PECE, see callout box) whose development I am actively involved in. The workspace allowed us to set up a group, where we could upload and share data while following established metadata standards (such as the creator, date and licensing of an artifact.). Further, it gave us the option to keep material restricted to our group or make it publicly available. For an interview we carried out with Deyaneira Garcia, a youth organizer involved in the soil collection, we received permission to publish the transcript under an open access, creative commons license (Fig. 1). Conveniently, the platform also allowed us to include the consent form, documenting that we had clear permission for publishing the data.
| About PECE and the Disaster STS Research NetworkThe Platform for Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography (PECE) is a free and open source (Drupal-based) digital platform that supports multi-sited, cross-scale ethnographic and historical research. PECE provides a place to archive and share primary data, facilitates analytic collaboration, and encourages experimentation with diverse modes of publication (read more about PECE and about research supporting the development of PECE). The Disaster STS Network is an instance of PECE, initially set up to support research in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Today, the network hosts projects and events of different kinds, including virtual symposia, exhibitions, university courses as well as civic community archives, such as a collection focused on the Taiwanese petrochemical company Formosa Plastics. |
Fig 1. Screenshot of the uploaded interview transcript on the Disaster STS Network.
None of these data sharing practices were required nor suggested as part of the work we carried out with OCEJ. The latest draft of our final product (the guidebook) included only indirect references or only snippets from the interviews — as is common for most qualitative research publications in the social sciences. However, not least due to the availability of new digital tools, professional expectations around transparency, anonymization and open access to research data have begun to change. Through the research, I learned that there is great potential in developing shared data sharing strategies and infrastructure with community-based organizations OCEJ in the future, delving into the different kinds of advocacy campaigns and publications such different kinds of (digital) archives could inspire.
- Developing effective science communication strategies
A recurring question throughout the ¡Plo No! subcommittee meetings was how to further communicate findings of the soil lead study to the affected community members in Santa Ana. As I had learned from the interviews with OCEJ organizers, presenting soil samples back to residents (after months of analysis) often created strategic opportunities for enrolling them in the larger campaign. However, we were presented with the problem of how to reach a wider audience of local community members who had not been directly involved.
One effective way of communicating both findings of the soil lead study is an audio documentary developed by UCI-based historian Juan Rubio. Recognized with the university’s 2021 E J Writing Award, the multi-part series “Air, Metal and Earth” provides historical analysis of the soil lead crisis in Santa Ana, exploring different potential sources (for example lead-infused paint or gasoline) and featuring interviews with different experts. Most importantly, the podcasts position the lead crisis within systemic factors contributing to environmental injustice (like the racist practice of redlining neighborhoods).
Therefore, an ideal community science initiative anticipates that its findings will need to be communicated to a variety of stakeholders, experimenting with different kinds of outputs (from traditional flyers to newspaper interviews and social media). Particularly relevant are genres that allow environmental problems to be approached from various angles (like the podcast series, or this virtual toxic tour), multiplying the ways that readers and listeners can connect the issue to intersecting social justice struggles – how lead exposure connects to both the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation of the climate crisis in Santa Ana.
What I have sketched here (open access, data infrastructure and science communication) are only three factors that I believe support community science initiatives, including capacity to document the success of the initiative. The OCEJ case study we worked on underlines the need to bring different forms of expertise together (from biological and health sciences to history and anthropology). Such collaborations also raise the question of how to move beyond established practices ( publishing in paywalled journals or not sharing research data, for example). Figuring out how to develop civic science research infrastructure with community organizations – using both existing tools and designing new ones, despite all constraints – is what I hope to work on in my next iteration as a fellow.
Tim Schütz is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. He was a 2020-2021 Newkirk Fellow with the Research Justice Shop. You can reach out to him on social media @tmschtz. For more information regarding the Research Justice Shop please visit the website or contact researchjustice@uci.edu or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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