The Contribution of Digital Sociology to the Investigation of Air Pollution

Air pollution and its implications for quality of life and human health are an important issues in industrialised and ur-banised countries. In recent years, there has been an increase in interest in alternative and supplementary air quality analysis methods which utilise techniques involving technologies developed during the Internet 2.0. In particular, the spread of mobile devices and the social media have contributed to the emergence of the new approaches discussed in this paper: People as Sensors, Citizen Science, and Collective Sensing. People as Sensors refers to the involvement of humans in the measurement phenomena and collection of data through mobile devices when used as sensing instru-ments. Citizen Science is a form of participatory sensing based on projects which enable citizens to act as agents of change. Collective Sensing is based on new research techniques which analyse the user-generated content published through social media platforms to explore concerns, opinions, alert messages, reactive behaviour and other aspects of human life. The common denominator of these approaches is the engagement of citizen as prosumer. After the conceptualisation of and comparison between the three different approaches, several examples of applications in the air pollution field will follow. The conclusion will discuss the pros and cos of these developments in investigation.