Project COBRA aims to promote community-owned solutions for environmental and social challenges in indigenous communities in South America. It takes a participatory approach using visual tools like photos, videos and drawings to communicate between scientists and communities, rejecting the traditional "deficit model" where experts educate communities seen as lacking knowledge. Instead, it recognizes communities' local expertise and seeks holistic, cooperative solutions determined through local participation rather than top-down control. However, this approach conflicts with policymakers' demands for standardized, reductionist scientific validation of communications.

1. The COBRA Project: A Community-Based
Approach to Public Engagement in Science
Andrea Berardi
The Open University, UK

2. “Explore, record and share
‘community-owned solutions’
for environmental and social
challenges using Information
and Communication
Technologies’
Project COBRA aims

3. Project COBRA partners

4. Project COBRA communities
North Rupununi
Guyana
Tumucumaque
Brazil
Kwamalasamutu
Suriname
Galibi
Suriname
Raposa do Sol
Brazil
Kavanayén /
Kamarata
VenezuelaKanuku
Mountains
Guyana

5. Indigenous communities are frequently portraid as ‘undeveloped’
and in need of external assistance in health, education,
employment, agriculture.....
Perception of indigenous communities

6. The Deficit Model proposes that communities lack appropriate
knowledge for managing their problems, and need to be
informed and educated by professional experts.
Models of Science Communication:
Deficit

7. Communitiies have the expertise
and local knowledge to resolve
problems.
The problems is not lack of
expertise and knowledge, but the
mode of communication within the
scientific community: written,
numerical, linear, abstract,
theoretical, generalised.....
Models of Science Communication:
Lay Expertise

8. What is a ‘community owned
solution’?
• local demand.
• locally executed
• local beneficiaries.
• positive long-term impact on the
socio-ecological environment.

9. Project COBRA approach

10. A visual approach to
communication
• Visual immagery
promotes more relaxed
and active participation.
• Visual imagery is more
accessible than the
written and spoken word.

11. ‘Rich Pictures’

12. Storyboarding

13. Photostories

14. Participatory Video

15. Sharing
Community Owned
Solutions

16. Community ‘MediaGate’

17. The need for a Paradigm Shift
in Science Communication
”There is a clear conflict between the principles
behind COBRA's participatory, visual and systemic
approach, and the demands of policymakers for
‘scientifically’ validated communications, which
require an imposition on the type and process of data
collection, analysis and positioning in the public
sphere.”

18. Models of Science
Communication
Deficit Lay Expertise
Onto-
epistemology
Reductionist, positivist,
mechanistic
Holistic, constructivist,
ecological
Environment
perceived to be...
Stable, predictable,
controllable,
Complex, dynamic,
unpredictable
Decision-making
control
Top-down,
international conventions
Participative, local
Organizational
principles
Hierarchical
Competitive
Consensual
Cooperative
Solutions Technocentric
Binary and unimodal
Behavioural
Experimental and
adaptive

19. The COBRA Project website:
http://projectcobra.org/
andrea.berardi@open.ac.uk