Chicago Wildlife Watch: Diversifying Zooniverse Volunteers?

Reflective of the 74% male STEM workforce in the United States, early studies of Galaxy Zoo found that 82% of participants were male. While newer projects, which are in a diverse range of scientific disciplines, have a higher... [ view full abstract ]

Reflective of the 74% male STEM workforce in the United States, early studies of Galaxy Zoo found that 82% of participants were male. While newer projects, which are in a diverse range of scientific disciplines, have a higher rate of female participation, of around one third, there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done if the Zooniverse is going to engage a more diverse audience in terms of age, gender and socio-economic background.

Imbedded in Chicago’s museum campus, the Adler Planetarium has been building Zooniverse citizen science projects for several years in collaboration with it’s major partner the University of Oxford. These highly successful projects achieve large international audiences, 2% of who are from the Chicago area.

In late 2013, the Urban Wildlife Institute from the Lincoln Park Zoo provided the Zooniverse at the Adler Planetarium with a unique opportunity to approach the promotion of a citizen science project from an entirely different perspective. Rather than seeking an international audience these two well known, and well respected, cultural institutions would attempt to work together with the local community to complete the analysis of a one-million image data set that included hugely engaging images of urban wildlife that the people of Chicago could find in their own back yard. This project was expected to appeal to local educators, families and volunteers who would not normally consider themselves able to participate in citizen science projects.

Chicago Wildlife Watch was launched in September of 2014 and this presentation will describe how the technology and techniques developed to attract and maintain a large international user base were adapted to appeal to a local audience and the lessons learned from this approach.