Real-time sentiment tracking gauge is added to the civic science funding index

How are stakeholders actually feeling about the current state of civic science funding? We all have our own read on the situation as funders, applicants, scholars, and others. But there hasn’t been a shared, real-time way of tracking that sentiment. What’s missing is a simple tool to show how decision makers across the ecosystem are feeling right now about the funding landscape, and how that sentiment shifts over time.

That’s why we’ve added the sentiment gauge (Figure 1) to the Civic Science Funding (CSF) Index.

This new gauge on the index gives us something we haven’t had before: a live pulse check on the current atmosphere surrounding civic science funding. It’s designed to bring visibility to a dimension of the landscape that’s often invisible.

Why add this: The goal is to create a shared signal. Stakeholders navigating the civic science funding landscape often do so in isolation, unsure whether their pessimism, ambivalence, or optimism is shared with others. With the sentiment gauge, we now have a way to surface some of those collective feelings.

Ultimately, it offers a kind of background intelligence.

How it works: The sentiment gauge is powered by a short survey in the backend. Anyone involved in civic science — funders, grantees, scholars, practitioners — can submit their sentiment at any time. The question is simple: rate your current funding sentiment on a scale from 0 to 100.

We’ve adopted familiar terminology from the stock market: Bearish 0–33 (pessimistic or negative outlook); Neutral 34–66 (no strong lean either way); Bullish 67–100 (optimistic or confident outlook).

All entries are time-stamped, allowing the tracking of shifts over time. Respondents can submit as many entries as they like, which helps capture how sentiment evolves in response to new announcements, policy shifts, or economic conditions. The dashboard currently displays a rolling average across quarterly breakdowns to provide temporal resolution.

As more data accumulates, we hope to be able to segment by stakeholders and domain categories.

What we’ve seen so far: The sentiment gauge launched at the start of June 2025 and we received a total of 10 entries by the end of the month. The average sentiment was 20, placing the mood in the bearish territory.

With a small n, there is not much we can read into the average for the period in question. But even this initial signal still reflects what many have been saying informally: a general sense of anxiety, pessimism, and uncertainty around the availability and stability of funding for civic science work.

Limitations and opportunities: This gauge is not prescriptive. It captures people’s opinions, and it won’t tell anyone what to do next. It is also impossible to accurately capture the full sentiment because some individuals’ sentiments will inevitably be missing. Ultimately, it’s one data point among others, such as new funding announcements and actual investments into projects which our broader index is attempting to capture. At the bare minimum, the sentiment gauge can be used to stimulate conversations.

As more data becomes available, we hope to showcase richer visualizations, finer time resolution, and deeper breakdowns where possible. Over time, this could help surface subtle patterns in an effort to strengthen our collective awareness.

Fanuel Muindi

Fanuel Muindi is a former neuroscientist turned civic science ethnographer. He is a professor of the practice in the Department of Communication Studies within the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, where he leads the Civic Science Media Lab. Dr. Muindi received his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and PhD in Organismal Biology from Morehouse College and Stanford University, respectively. He completed his postdoctoral training at MIT.