Skating on Thinning Ice: Backyard Citizen Science for Climate Change Awareness

For 10 + years, a citizen science project—TempWatch—has conducted research on climate change using data submitted by the public. Participants, often blue-collar professionals, contributed data on the building/use of backyard rinks and engaged in social media interactions about rink building, climate change, and weather. For this poster, we examine the social media of the TempWatch community whose interests—rinks and hockey—lie tangentially, almost orthogonally, to the climate change research concerns of the scientists. Our research questions address the following: In what manner does climate change discourse arise in the virtual social milieu among TempWatch proximal (those who run the project) and distal (those who contribute raw data to the project) participants? How do proximal and distal participants encounter and respond to that public discourse on issues of climate change and beyond? Findings include insights into community induction/building; participant knowledge growth; the rise of an ‘elite’ participant class; and the use of nostalgia to drive participation. We wonder, ‘is this a climate change education entry point, or another exclusion point?’. Today, Canadians still spend countless hours skating on backyard rinks, frozen lakes and rivers across the country. The International Ice Hockey Federation estimates that there are about 5,000 outdoor ice rinks across Canada today, almost twice as many as there are indoor rinks.