Giorgi Iankoshvili
(Ilia State University, Georgia)
Citizen Science - how social media helps to contribute to biodiversity knowledge:
Georgia's experience
Citizen science is the involvement of society in scientific research, will it be community-based or global. Citizen science connects scientists, data managers, experts, students, and amateur researchers.
Any person, despite age and work in the field, can contribute to the development of citizen science. Citizen science for monitoring and research is very cost-effective.
There are several amateur bases associated with social media sources, making possible for anyone to participate in a simple way by registration on a page. Such platforms include - iNaturalist, GBIF, Facebook pages, and different types of blogs.
Citizen science appeared in Georgia not so long ago, but it attracts increasing number of young interested people, students and amateur naturalists, every year. Georgia is a leader in the region in terms of the rapid development of citizen science. Since 2015 we have collected information from different online platforms and social networks, where information was filled in with the help of volunteers interested in Georgia's biodiversity.
The information is as follows: date, time of day, coordinates of observation, weather, the size and sex of a specimen, information about the collector, and so on.
With the help of citizen science, the literary data has been significantly improved, and we have a clearer picture of the current situation.