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Technoscientific Citizenship in Citizen Science. Assembling Crowds for Biomedical Research

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TechnoScienceSociety

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook ((SOSC,volume 30))

Abstract

This chapter explores “citizen science” as a contemporary variant of participatory citizenship. It analyzes how two biomedical online citizen science projects address potential participants. What does it mean to enact citizenship in these citizen science projects according to the self-descriptions of the projects? How do their web interfaces regulate participation?

I suggest that citizen science in the dominant mode of crowdsourcing may redefine technoscientific citizenship. After the paradigms of popularization (shaped by the deficit model) and deliberation (shaped by discourses of risk and uncertainty), the new paradigm of citizen science positions participants as productive contributors to scientific research and technological innovation. In their social position as citizen scientists, individuals do not primarily enact citizenship by taking part in political discourses but by becoming responsible members of a productive crowd of volunteers in a predefined technoscientific regime of knowledge production.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the methodological background of the following reconstructive analysis, see Bora and Hausendorf 2006 and Wenninger 2015.

  2. 2.

    The following analysis was performed together with Andreas Wenninger and Marcel Woznica.

  3. 3.

    User interfaces can be understood as contemporary ways in which humans and machines are related to each other. They are “a relation with technology rather than […] a technology in itself. In this relation the interface describes a boundary condition that is at the same time encountered and worked through toward some specific end” (Hookway 2014). User interfaces can be interpreted as the slash between the techno/social distinction, co-constituting and bridging both sides of the distinction and thus creating new technosocial realities. Interfaces are borders that allow interpenetration, regulate the flow of information and set the conditions for irritation (Karafillidis 2012: 53). Unlike other linkages between humans and machines (which can also happen by accident and coincidence), interfaces are designed to make a specific relation happen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sociology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Sascha Dickel

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  1. Sascha Dickel
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Correspondence to Sascha Dickel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS), Technical University Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany

    Sabine Maasen

  2. Institute of Sociology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

    Sascha Dickel

  3. Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Christoph Schneider

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Dickel, S. (2020). Technoscientific Citizenship in Citizen Science. Assembling Crowds for Biomedical Research. In: Maasen, S., Dickel, S., Schneider, C. (eds) TechnoScienceSociety. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43965-1_14

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