January 11th, 2017 | RESEARCH
Citizen science continues to grow, potentially increasing competition among projects to recruit and retain volunteers interested in participating. Using web analytics, we examined the ability of a marketing campaign to broaden project awareness, while driving engagement and retention in an online, crowdsourced project. The campaign challenged audiences to support the classification of >9,000 pairs of images. The campaign was successful due to increased engagement, but it did not increase the time participants spent classifying images. Engagement over multiple days was significantly shorter during the campaign. We provide lessons learned to improve targeted recruitment and retention of participants in online projects.
Document
(no document provided)
Team Members
Alycia Crall, Author, National Ecological Observatory NetworkMargaret Kosmala, Author, Harvard University
Rebecca Cheng, Author, George Mason University
Jonathan Brier, Author, University of Maryland
Darlene Cavalier, Author, Arizona State University
Sandra Henderson, Author, National Ecological Observatory Network
Andrew Richardson, Author, Harvard University
Citation
Identifier Type: ISSN
Identifier: 1824-2049
Publication: Journal of Science Communication
Volume: 16
Number: 1
Related URLs
Tags
Audience: General Public | Museum | ISE Professionals | Scientists
Discipline: Climate | General STEM | Life science
Resource Type: Peer-reviewed article | Research Products
Environment Type: Citizen Science Programs | Media and Technology | Public Programs | Websites | Mobile Apps | Online Media