FECYT participates in the European project Newsera: Citizen Science as the new paradigm for science communication

The kick off meeting of the European Project Newsera, Citizen Science as the new paradigm for science communication, was held in Barcelona on the on 4th, 5th and 6th of February. The project has been funded by the European Commission through an H2020 RIA having a budget of more than 1.2 millions of euros.

For three years, academic experts in scientific policy and scientific advice and professionals in citizen science and communication - led by Science for Change (Spain) - will collaborate to support the European Union to co-design innovative strategies to improve scientific communication in European citizen science projects in order to improve their impact.

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) will be involved in multiple aspects of the project, with special responsibility in improving the communication of citizen science projects towards policy makers (public and political managers at all levels of the administration).

The Newsera project thus introduces two new concepts: citizen scientific communication, understood as a way of communicating broader and more inclusive science, with an important role of agents in the generation and analysis of research results, and scientific citizen journalism, where all the agents involved define the social, cultural and economic frameworks in which the data collected, analyzed and communicated to ensure transparency and reliability.