Citizen science for social physics: digital tools and participation

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. The current manuscript is not a review paper of citizen science projects from the context of social physics as there are still too few experiences in this context. We, in contrast, present a selection of our own experiences during the last decade to extract key learnings and further reflect on citizen science practices for social physics. We first describe several human mobility experiments in urban contexts with the participation of concerned young students, old women, or other different groups of neighbors. We second share how we have studied community mental healthcare provision in collaboration with a civil society organization 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 of increasing the societal impact of the research on complex social phenomena.