Citizen Scientist Journaling on COVID-19:
documenting the impact of the pandemic & offering solutions
The Citizen Scientist Journaling project seeks to capture the small and large costs of COVID-19 and the coping mechanisms used by individuals and communities, especially those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to create a public digital archive of how Illinois residents are managing socially, emotionally, and economically using a citizen/community scientist approach.
Citizen scientists are community members working with scientists to create new knowledge and any Illinois resident can participate. Multifaceted information is collected to highlight the complexity of the impacts of COVID-19 on real people’s lives and provide personal accounts of their experiences to produce critical insight into social, mental and economic costs to individuals, families, and communities.
As part of this pilot project, community members from across Illinois have shared their experiences about how they are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown and the strategies they used to cope with the stress and grief associated with the pandemic. The personal experiences they share can highlight issues that need to be addressed in terms of:
Health
Economics
Social Safety Nets
Discrimination
Public Policy
We hope to learn more about the key factors that make people more vulnerable and resilient to the impacts of COVID-19. We also hope that others may find these experiences and any coping strategies helpful and will continue to provide updates with how this process is going.
weekly Journal submissions
sample Journal entries
Our citizen scientists
virtual Journaling trainings
Submit your journal
meet the Team
Contact us
WeekLY Journal Spotlights
“I am struggling with despair. But I know that collapsing into it is exactly what will feed the voices that say the disappearance of 178,000 human beings is acceptable.”
“I’m a strong believer in regression to the mean. Meaning everything won’t always be good or always bad, there’s a balance. And I believe the world will find that balance again.”
“When will this end?”
“My mental health is not great but what helps me is that I know that what I do at work makes a big difference in someone else’s life. Being able to help a friend a family member a stranger is what allows me to wake up and do it all over again because it makes me happy to be out in the world helping anyone that needs help. I wish I could do so much more I wish I could be in a thousand places at one time doing everything I an to make a difference.”
Sample Journal Entries
For more projects and programs similar to Citizen Scientist Journaling, visit:
Photo Credits:
By www.vperemen.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88926928
"Notepad with paper clips" by Image Genie is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/e716ccc2-b8ca-419f-9c59-fef2c9825dd1
"DSCN6475.JPG" by zagraves is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, https://www.flickr.com/photos/38047953@N00/154569183
Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/N82naZ0N4TY
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
Macau Photo Agency. “Medical Tents Assembled at Emergency Entrance of Kiang Wu Hospital, Macau, China.” Unsplash, 8 Apr. 2020, unsplash.com/photos/Rv3QXYUwiWw.
Luo, Mitchell. “Sign for COVID-19 Testing .” Unsplash, 31 Mar. 2020, unsplash.com/photos/2-9msx_Db9g.
Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/s/photos/journal?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/s/photos/strong-families?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText