Spot, log, map: Assessing a marine virtual citizen science program against Reed's best practice for stakeholder participation in environmental management

Social licence through citizen science: A tool for marine conservation

“…participants’ families, friends and community networks). These observations align with other experiences in the literature which show that volunteering in citizen science projects increases participants’ concern about conservation issues and that participants disseminate the knowledge they learn to their wider social networks (Johnson et al 2014;Nursey-Bray et al 2017). Citizen science can have broader societal impacts, especially in promoting conservation awareness because ‘personal conversation is probably the biggest spreader of education’(B4) .…”

“…Trust in marine citizen science activities and processes, equity in accessibility to programmes, as well as capacity to learn through participation, are important factors to consider in developing long-term marine citizen science programmes (Nursey-Bray et al 2017) and for establishing its contribution to social licence in the marine space. In developing marine citizen science to promote marine citizenship with European society, the public may be more likely to award social licence or social acceptance to marine conservation efforts by agreeing on and justifying shared community understanding on what is acceptable intervention and development in the marine realm and who is entitled to make and regulate this rules (Soma and Haggett 2015).…”

“…Community networks can play a strong role in enhancing policy support (Dean et al 2016) and citizen science presents an ideal tool to explore this. Citizen science is known to engage and inform the public about science and the natural environment and enhance empowerment to act (Martin et al 2016a;McKinley et al 2017;Nursey-Bray et al 2017). Such public engagement can provide an avenue to develop social acceptance, allowing communities and society to partake in policy development and decisions that will affect them (Soma and Haggett 2015).…”

The post-political nature of marine spatial planning and modalities for its re-politicisation

“…By producing and making use of alternative knowledges, stakeholders can begin to counter the prevailing narratives and rationalities within marine governance. Their capacity to produce such knowledge could be enhanced through citizen science (Nursey-Bray, Palmer, & Pecl, 2018;Kelly, Flemming, Pecl, Ritcher, & Bonn. 2019) and participatory mapping (Boucquey, St Martin, Fairbanks, Campbell, & Wise, 2019) projects that would enable them to provide alternative data to the technocratic, top-down forms of data collection.…”

Social license through citizen science: a tool for marine conservation

“…Communicating and constructing quality, two-way, meaningful dialogue with and among stakeholders is essential to generate SL Zhang 2014, Zhang et al 2018) Maintaining volunteer participation in CS is required to build and develop project capacity (Bonney et al 2009, Martin et al 2016c, Nursey-Bray et al 2018 Earning SL requires bringing stakeholders together to discuss, debate, and define issues and improve community relations Zhang 2014, Lacey et al 2017) CS brings diverse users together to share information and experiences, building relationships that might otherwise not exist (Aceves-Bueno et al 2015, Bonney et al 2016 Addressing SL issues by facilitating dialogue allows communities to raise concerns and opinions they might not otherwise have the opportunity to share Lacey 2014, Jijelava andVanclay 2017) Collaborative development of CS between researchers and the public can identify issues and questions of community interest and enhance societal relevance of science (Thiel et al 2014, Bonney et al 2016 Sharing perceptions, opinions, and experiences can enlighten stakeholders, industry, and government on the experiences of other groups (Gallois et al 2016, Jijelava andVanclay 2017) Learning-by-doing in CS enhances understanding and scientific literacy (Bela et al 2016, Turrini et al 2018; participants also gain greater awareness about threats to their examined ecosystem through direct experience (Bonney et al 2009, Crall et al 2012 Earning SL demands that parties demonstrate that their use of the ecosystem and data is credible, legitimate, and trustworthy (Moffat and Zhang 2014, Gall and Rodwell 2016, Jijelava and Vanclay 2017 Citizen science promotes reflection and discussion about how science interacts with society and its values; jointly developing projects legitimizes data collection, production, and application (Aceves-Bueno et al 2015, Elliott et al 2017 Communicating and debating groups' interests and concerns encourage dialogue and cooperation to achieve agreement and earn SL (Gallois et al 2016, Zhang et al 2018 Working together in CS brings scientists and nonscientists together to develop and achieve joint research and educational objectives (Bonney et al 2009…”