Bates, J. orcid.org/0000-0001-7266-8470, Goodale, P. orcid.org/0000-0002-4352-5486 and Lin, Y. (Accepted: 2016) Co-observing the Weather, Co-predicting the Climate: Human Factors in Building Infrastructures for Crowdsourced Data. Science and Technology Studies, 29 (3).
Abstract
This paper investigates the embodied performance of 'doing citizen science'. It examines how 'citizen scientists' produce scientific data using the resources available to them, and how their socio-technical practices and emotions impact the construction of a crowdsourced data infrastructure. We found that conducting citizen science is highly emotional and experiential, but these individual experiences and feelings tend to get lost or become invisible when user-contributed data are aggregated and integrated into a big data infrastructure. While new meanings can be extracted from big data sets, the loss of individual emotional and practical elements denotes the loss of data provenance and the marginalisation of individual efforts, motivations, and local politics which might lead to disengaged participants and unsustainable communities of citizen scientists. The challenges of constructing a data infrastructure for crowdsourced data therefore lie in the management of both technical and social issues which are local as well as global.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 Suomen tieteen- ja teknologiantutkimuksen seura ry. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Science and Technology Studies. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy |
Keywords: | crowdsourcing; big data infrastructure; citizen science |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Information School (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL (AHRC) AH/L009978/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Aug 2016 08:42 |
Last Modified: | 11 Apr 2017 23:41 |
Published Version: | http://ojs.tsv.fi/index.php/sts/article/view/59199 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies |
Refereed: | Yes |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:102806 |