Can you suggest ways to elaborate the caption of this visualization to extend its ethnographic message?

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Diana Pardo Pedraza's picture
March 12, 2020

The caption does a good job of providing information on citizens' autodidactic practices and the multiple bureaucratic, technical, and political barriers they have to overcome to make their case. However, I would like to know more about the map itself, about the document in which it was buried, what spatial and environmental conclusions can be drawn from this representation. 

I also think it would be pertinent to explore and perhaps forefront the idea of the  “language” of monitoring (I'm not sure if it is or ought to be the same language of reparation). This element of the title and the caption is a bit uncharted. 

Also, what do you mean by ‘esoteric.’ It seems to me that by describing science that way, the author emphasizes even more the so-called obscure, complicated, and expert character of scientific knowledge. 

I would also be attentive to the language used to describe the interlocutors. Although they are portrayed as active agents, they still seem to be inexperienced, ignorant —their expertise always running behind scientific practices. 

I believe there is a leap from acquiring (cartographic) knowledge to remediation requests and access to political stakeholders. Maybe remediation needs its own visualization?

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Elena Sobrino's picture
March 8, 2020

I think your caption addresses very well the frustrations of the uptake of this type of map for citizen scientists. I would also love to know more about places where this map might be leveraged, or contested--are there public meetings where citizen scientists and experts can have some kind of dialogue, however limited? And I would love to know what strategies citizen scientists develop as alternatives to the kind of "data treadmill" it seems such maps are symptomatic of. 

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