Visualizing the civic science domains Googled in 2024

To get a pulse on interest across civic science domains, we analyzed Google search trends from the past year using the following five terms: science communication, citizen science, science journalism, science policy, and informal science.

This analysis is based on Google Trends’ “Interest over time” metric, which reflects search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 indicates peak popularity for the term, 50 means the term was half as popular, and 0 implies insufficient data for the term.

The data spans January 1 to November 23, 2024, and is drawn from Google Trends.

Why This Matters

These terms act as gateways that guide stakeholders to discover research papers, events, funding, people, and organizations across the civic science universe. Showcasing how people search for these domains can help prospective stakeholders interested in civic science navigate the landscape.

Fanuel Muindi

Fanuel Muindi is a former neuroscientist turned civic science scholar-journalist and entrepreneur. He is a Professor of Practice in 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.

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