Contested futures for lighting in urban spaces: drawing on ideas about messiness and resistance to inform lighting education strategies against light pollution. Author Mary-Anne Kyriakou

3.1 The need for darkness

Building on the notion of the messiness and the subjective nature of light is the problem of light pollution. All living creatures require darkness to function healthily. Light pollution has a negative effect on the health and wellbeing of humans, animals and plant life forms (Falchi, Cinzano, Elvidge, Keith, & Haim, 2011) (Chepesiuk, 2009). For 70% of the world population, the night sky is now too bright to see the Milky Way (Loss of the Night, mobile phone application).

Light pollution is caused by stray light originating from: luminaires (including projectors); emission producing light sources and surface reflections that scatter light upwards into the night skies contributing to and creating night glow. This glow effect is amplified on cloudy nights (Kyba, Ruhtz, Fischer, & Holker, 2011). Light pollution is obtrusive when public or private lighting schemes produce lighting that strays into the realm of private homes. Mobility light pollution is a growing trend with the adoption of brighter LEDs and is mainly experienced from traffic. Sources of light pollution include; poor shielded light sources from luminaires; emissions from light displays; light projection; surface reflections and traffic.

3.1.1 Exploring attitudes and behaviours

The widespread use of digital LED lighting has accelerated a shifting baseline of nocturnal experience (Lyytimaki, 2013).  Meaning that the current and next generation of urban citizens will lose their connection with the night skies and in the process, continue to contribute to the growing environmental light pollution problem.

Lyytimaki discusses current attitudes towards light pollution, street and road lighting is often considered a ‘natural’ part of urban and semi-urban scenery, even at times when traffic is absent (Lyytimaki, 2013)

New digital LED public street lighting has the capability to be dimmable and controlled, however, the new public lighting schemes continue to contribute to collective and citizen directed light pollution. In addition, widely held positive perceptions towards lighting may prevent people from publicly stating any personal reservations about artificial lighting, even when badly designed or implemented lighting decreases human well-being (Lyytimaki, 2013).

Demonstrating this kind of attitude, are government funded light festivals and large showy firework displays that prevent citizens to question and criticize government spending and the production of light pollution. For example, the Vivid Festival Sydney, Australia holds annually a winter light festival that engulfs the CBD and metropolitan area for up to three weeks. The environmental impact of light pollution created by the event is unknown and the marketing and financial success of the event would prevent the information to be known or for it to be raised critically. 

The festival was originally conceived as a Smart Light low energy light festival (conceived by the author) and the sustainability activity was supported by the Sydney Observatory and local businesses, after the first year this initiative was replaced by purchasing carbon credits. In the author's opinion the purchase of carbon credits pushes away government responsibility.

Not only are residents and wildlife, victims to the success of the event, but the lines between entertainment, design, art and environment are muddied and unclear. Everything is about light and ideas and the masses must simply accept without questioning. The city of Sydney proudly supports Earth Hour and in the next category of entertainment, supports Vivid Sydney and a string of extremely showy firework displays. It is no wonder that light pollution as a serious environmental concern and is misunderstood by the public.

This scenario demonstrates an imbalance of government power to mediate activity in public space that in the long term devalues light art, devalues public space by contributing to light pollution and silences citizen feedback or concern. The Vivid Light festival is one of a string of mega light festivals that occur in major cities around the world.

3.2 Introducing citizen science as a potential to reach millions of participants (Bonney, Philips, Ballard,..2015) and a site for digital education.

What is citizen science?

Citizen science are science led large-scale global projects using citizens as volunteers, to participate in collecting data, data processing, curriculum- based and community science education (Bonney, Philips, Ballard, 2015). Large data sets can be analysed to identify patterns and predict behaviours. Some examples of citizen science projects include large scale data collections on bird migration, water quality, and other fields of ecology and environmental sciences (Dickinson et al 2012; Follet and Strezov 2015).

From a curriculum-based viewpoint of teaching, citizen science provides students with new ways to engage with the science curriculum for example:

Citizen Science school pupil engagement environment

  (3 minutes)

From a public education perspective, a citizen science project on tracking and providing basic information on light pollution may improve public understanding of light pollution and thereby assist to reduce it.

In terms of providing citizen engagement, how effective is this method? "Does the practice of citizen science move away from a one-way deficit model of public engagement ?"(Stilgoe et al. 2014)

" Does citizen science have the potential to democratize science and through participant involvement, lead to new governance?" (Woolley et al., 2016; Bonny, Philips, Ballard, 2015).  

These are some of the questions in current discussion regarding citizen science.

Can citizen science change attitudes?

The citizen science process is not without criticism or problems (Kelling et al., 2015; Yaela N. Golumbic, 2017) however the potential for new dialogues and action can only assist to raise environmental awareness and the complexity of the problem.

There are limited but growing evidence that citizen science projects achieve participant gains in knowledge about science knowledge and process, increase public awareness of the diversity of scientific research, and provide deeper meaning to participants’ hobbies. (Bonney, Philips, Ballard, Enck. 2015)

Research led, Kyba, Germany, has developed a number of citizen science projects to track light pollution, namely, “Globe at Night”, “Loss of the night” and “Dark Sky Meter”. The above mentioned projects have the potential for the citizen to improve their night sky literacy and become aware of night loss in urban areas (Kyba et al., 2013).

The question on how effective this process is to  raising awareness towards the value of dark skies and thereby reduce light pollution is unknown.

Which raises the question, who’s views are being presented? Who are they aimed to influence? “Scientist who speak positively about communicating with the public tend to perceive this communication as a one-way transfer of information which members of the public become educated” (Cook et al. 2004; Davies 2008) and “scientists in the UK and US believe they should play a role in public debates but view policy makers as the most important group to engage” (Besley and Nisbet, 2014).

In trying to bridge the gap between scientific intention, rhetoric and practice, other questions regarding the collection of data via the internet are raised. Are citizens aware for whom the data is produced for and how it will be used? Without the citizen fully understanding how data is used the system exploits a soft surveillance system of collecting data built on a “sharing is caring culture” and “uncovering secrets” (Lyon, 2017, page 832).

The author would like to add that the above mentioned light pollution projects offer the participant the option to remain anonymous.

Where does this leave the possibility for public education? And to what extent can citizen science change views and behaviour?

The area of understanding the effectiveness and potential for citizen science to educate and change attitudes/behaviours is complex. The author is of the opinion there is potential for citizen science to inform the public regarding light pollution and as there is potential to change the attitudes and behaviours of citizens, however, the following areas need to be tackled;

1. Project communication by scientists to the public needs to improve beyond one directional (Kelling et al., 2015; Yaela N. Golumbic, 2017).

Recognising that not all science projects are intented to achieve a greater degree of public understanding of science, social change, or improved science-society relationships, those that do require effort and resources in four main categories: (1) project design (2) outcomes reach (3) engagement of new audiences, and (4) new directions of research (Bonny, Philips, Ballard,..(2015)

2. Scientific language is problematic

Re-looking at the potential for citizen science, the language of scientific claims must also evolve to include and acknowledge the role of narratives. 

Expanding on the area of science communication, Locke argues the problem with the public understanding of science has come about from rationalisation whereby, the language of scientific discourse and its claims, separates science from society. Locke supports that the socialisation of scientific knowledge (SKK) is needed and “the public understanding of science has been assumed to conform to the monolithic logic and perception of science associated with rationalisation, leading to an impoverished view of the cognitive outlook of the modern individual (Locke, 2001).” He argues that,

“The discovery of science as a lived social practice has important lessons for sociological views in modernity. In SKK, science appears as a ‘mess’ (Knorr-Cetina 1983) of tacit knowledge, informal procedures and occasioned practices, with little if any of the technical purity depicted in scientific reports and reified by rationalisation. (Locke, 2001)

3. The public may / may not be educated by the process of participation (Bonney, R., Phillips, T. B., Ballard, H. L., & Enck, J. W. 2016). It is unknown whether the citizens participating in the dark sky projects mentioned in this module have  changed their behaviour  and attitude towards light pollution.

4. Soft surveillance of data collection exploits a "sharing is caring culture" (Gough, 2013). How is this being addressed in data collection?

5. Course curriculum exploring citizen science needs to engage in non reductive practices

Gough argues, to push against ‘constructive alignment’ in curriculum design that perpetuates the mind-set of complexity reduction.  Current approaches to citizen science are reductive in that they engage citizens to collect data that is evidence- based, and in the process “distracts us from important deliberations on the purposes, functions and directions of educational processes and practices” (Biesta quoted, Gough, 2013. Page 1226).

Conclusion

I believe there is potential for citizen science to support public education and, multiple sites for emergence will occur if the issues above are addressed and worked through as 'potential sites of emergence'  (Biesta (2004, 2007), Gough (2013). The scale of citizen participation and type of projects, brings about new practices that have potential to take on a "fruitful mess" approach. When this occurs can quality exchanges between scientists and citizens unfold. 

The number of successful data collection projects are in the thousands with millions of participants in collecting and/or processing data have sprung up around the world. (Bonney, Philips, Ballard, more..(2015))

This scale and volume of interest in taking part in citizen science projects has great potential for the understanding of light pollution to influence and change behaviour.

The time for preserving our dark skies is running out (Lyytamiki, 2013)  and the situation of light pollution needs action now.

Activity: 10 minutes

Reflect on the earlier notion of Shepard (2013) use of the term ‘messiness’, prepare a short paragraph of how this plays out in citizen science and in the public education for understanding light pollution.

Has the information provided by this short course assisted to introduce you to new ideas about messiness and complexity in education?

Please feel free to drop the author an email on

s1689925@ed.ac.uk

References

Biesta, G.J.J. (2007). Why ‘what works’ won’t work. Evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit of educational research. Educational Theory 57(1), 1-22.

Bonney, R., Cooper, C., Dickinson, J., Kelling, S., Phillips, T., Rosenberg, K,V., Shirk, J. (2009) Citizen Science: A developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy. Journal of BioScience, Volume 59, Issue 11, 1 December 2009, Pages 977-984.

Bonney, R., Phillips, T. B., Ballard, H. L., & Enck, J. W. (2016). Can citizen science enhance public understanding of science? Public Understanding Science, 25(1), 2-16. doi:10.1177/0963662515607406

Bonney, R., Shirk, J. L., Phillips, T. B., Wiggins, A., Ballard, H. L., Miller-Rushing, A. J., & Parrish, J. K. (2014). Next steps for citizen science. Science, 343. doi:10.1126/science.1251554

Breen, M. (1997). Information Does Not Equal Knowledge: Theorising the Political Economy of Virtuality. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(3).

Chepesiuk, R. (2009). Missing the dark: health effects of light pollution. Environ Health Perspect, 117(1), A20-27.

Falchi, F., Cinzano, P., Elvidge, C. D., Keith, D. M., & Haim, A. (2011). Limiting the impact of light pollution on human health, environment and stellar visibility. J Environ Manage, 92(10), 2714-2722. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.06.029

Gough, N. (2013). Towards deconstructive nonalignment: A complexivist view of curriculum, teaching and learning. SAJHE, pp 1213-1233.

Kelling, S., Fink, D., La Sorte, F. A., Johnston, A., Bruns, N. E., & Hochachka, W. M. (2015). Taking a 'Big Data' approach to data quality in a citizen science project. Ambio, 44 Suppl 4, 601-611. doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0710-4

Kyba, C. C., Ruhtz, T., Fischer, J., & Holker, F. (2011). Cloud coverage acts as an amplifier for ecological light pollution in urban ecosystems. PLoS One, 6(3), e17307. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017307

Kyba, C. C., Wagner, J. M., Kuechly, H. U., Walker, C. E., Elvidge, C. D., Falchi, F., . . . Holker, F. (2013). Citizen science provides valuable data for monitoring global night sky luminance. Sci Rep, 3, 1835. doi:10.1038/srep01835

Locke, S. (2001). Sociology and the public understanding of science: from rationalization to rhetoric1. The British Journal of Sociology. Volume 52, Issue 1, Pages 1–18.

 Lyon, D. (2017). Surveillance Culture: Engagement, Exposure, and Ethics in Digital Modernity

. International Journal of Communication, 11, 824-842.

Lyytimaki, J. (2013). Nature’s nocturnal services: Light pollution as a non-recognised challenge for ecosystem services research and management. [page 45 Shifting Baseline of night experience]. Ecosystem Services, 3(e44-e48).

Ritter, J. (2016). Post-truth The Word of the Year 2016 and it relevance to lighting design. Professional Lighting Design, 103.

Ross, J. (2017). Speculative method in digital education research, Learning, Media and Technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 41(2), 214-229.

Shepard, M. (2013). Minor urbanism: everyday entanglements of technology and urban life. Continuum, 27(4), 483-494. doi:10.1080/10304312.2013.803299

Srnicek, N. (2017). The challenges of platform capitalism: Understanding the logic of a new business model. TOC, 23(4), 254-257.

Woolley, J. P., McGowan, M. L., Teare, H. J., Coathup, V., Fishman, J. R., Settersten, R. A., Jr., . . . Juengst, E. T. (2016). Citizen science or scientific citizenship? Disentangling the uses of public engagement rhetoric in national research initiatives. BMC Med Ethics, 17(1), 33. doi:10.1186/s12910-016-0117-1

Yaela N. Golumbic, D. O., Ayelet Baram-Tsabari and Barak Fishbain  (2017). Between Vision and Reality: A Study of Scientists’ Views on Citizen Science. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2(1)(6), pp.1-13. doi:DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.53