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Citizen science for social physics: Digital tools and participation

J. Perelló, F. Larroya, I. Bonhoure, F. Peter

TL;DR

The paper addresses how to fuse citizen science with social physics to study complex societal phenomena, using two in-field themes—urban human mobility and mental health care provision. It showcases practical workflows for designing or adapting digital tools (e.g., BeePath, Wikiloc, Games for Mental Health, CoAct chatbot) and establishing participatory governance (co-researchers, knowledge coalitions) to collect crowdsourced data and produce actionable insights. Key contributions include demonstrating privacy-preserving data collection, flexible in-the-field experimentation, and co-produced policy outputs that bridge research and urban or health policy. The work argues that citizen social science can broaden data sources, empower participants, and amplify the societal impact of social-physics research through co-design, ethics, and direct policy engagement.

Abstract

Social physics is an active and diverse field in which many scientists with formal training in physics study a broad class of complex social phenomena. Social physics investigates societal problems but most often does not count on the active and conscious participation of the citizens. We here want to support the idea that citizen science, and more particularly citizen social science, can contribute to the broad field of social physics. We do so by sharing some of our own experiences during the last decade. We first describe several human mobility experiments in urban contexts with the participation of concerned young students, old women or other different groups of neighbours. We second share how we have studied community mental health care provision in collaboration with a civil society organisation and with the intense involvement of persons with lived experience in mental health. In both cases, we narrow down the discussion to digital tools being used and the involved participatory dynamics. In this way, we share key learnings to enhance a synergistic relationship between social physics and citizen science and with the aim increase the societal impact of the research on complex social phenomena.

Citizen science for social physics: Digital tools and participation

TL;DR

The paper addresses how to fuse citizen science with social physics to study complex societal phenomena, using two in-field themes—urban human mobility and mental health care provision. It showcases practical workflows for designing or adapting digital tools (e.g., BeePath, Wikiloc, Games for Mental Health, CoAct chatbot) and establishing participatory governance (co-researchers, knowledge coalitions) to collect crowdsourced data and produce actionable insights. Key contributions include demonstrating privacy-preserving data collection, flexible in-the-field experimentation, and co-produced policy outputs that bridge research and urban or health policy. The work argues that citizen social science can broaden data sources, empower participants, and amplify the societal impact of social-physics research through co-design, ethics, and direct policy engagement.

Abstract

Social physics is an active and diverse field in which many scientists with formal training in physics study a broad class of complex social phenomena. Social physics investigates societal problems but most often does not count on the active and conscious participation of the citizens. We here want to support the idea that citizen science, and more particularly citizen social science, can contribute to the broad field of social physics. We do so by sharing some of our own experiences during the last decade. We first describe several human mobility experiments in urban contexts with the participation of concerned young students, old women or other different groups of neighbours. We second share how we have studied community mental health care provision in collaboration with a civil society organisation and with the intense involvement of persons with lived experience in mental health. In both cases, we narrow down the discussion to digital tools being used and the involved participatory dynamics. In this way, we share key learnings to enhance a synergistic relationship between social physics and citizen science and with the aim increase the societal impact of the research on complex social phenomena.
Paper Structure (16 sections, 8 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 16 sections, 8 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Human mobility
  3. Digital tools: crowdsourced data collection and human mobility
  4. Building and updating an App
  5. Reusing existing Apps
  6. Participation: engaging people in pedestrian mobility experiments
  7. Purposed-based pedestrian mobility
  8. Activating public spaces in a neighborhood through mobility
  9. Mental health
  10. Digital tools: crowdsourced data collection on mental health and human behaviour
  11. Social dilemmas in digital platforms
  12. A chatbot to maintain a long-term interaction
  13. Participation: lived experiences in mental health
  14. Behavioural traits within the mental health care community
  15. The social support networks in mental health
  16. ...and 1 more sections

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: Screenshots of the mobile Apps being used to collect GPS data. Left image shows the information displayed by the BeePath App: time, latitude, longitude, GPS precision, username and a button to finish the experiment. Right image shows the information displayed by the Wikiloc App: time, a map with the trajectory, and two buttons to restart (or pause) and to finish the journey recording. Texts are in Catalan.
  • Figure 2: Frame of the Barcelona Science Festival citizen science experiment promotional video. We show the frame with a representation of the potential wells that qualitatively visualizes the attraction level of the spots inside Parc de la Ciutadella and where scientific outreach activities were taking place. The video can be found in Vimeo videofesta.
  • Figure 3: Map visualization of the recurrent trajectories made by a group of old women from a community center. We show the map being used for the discussions in the community center (Centre Cívic Pere Quart, CC Pere Quart) and being shared with the neighborhood to further promote walkability. Most suitable routes for the about 1h journeys were suggested. Departures and arrivalls were made from CC Pere Quart on Tuesdays and from another community center on Thursdays (Casal Sant Ramon). Two additional locations were added in the map as they were key targeted objectives. Beepath is a joint effort of OpenSystems-Universitat de Barcelona, Eduscopi (science education and communication company) and Dribia (data science company) and their logos appeared in these maps.
  • Figure 4: Map visualization of the trajectories from BeePath in schools. 28 processed home-to-school (or school-to-home) individual trajectories displayed (red) on a map around the Sant Gabriel de Viladecans school (blue), located at the city of Viladecans in the Barcelona metropolitan area. Data is geo-masked following the protocol described in Ref. Larroya2023. Green areas correspond to public parks.
  • Figure 5: Electronic tablet of Games for Mental Health. The text of tablet says that not all participants are ready and that the next game is about to start. The Citizen Social Lab digital platform is running through a local server connected to electronic tables with a wifi connection. Participants played in groups of six in an outdoor public space during the 2016 World Mental Health Day related event in Lleida (Spain).
  • ...and 3 more figures