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ABSTRACT
This introduction presents the context in which digital participatory biodiversity science has developed. After describing its basic operating model and how it is affecting scientific practice, the text suggests that a science and technology studies perspective may shed light on some of the issues raised by new ways of doing biodiversity science. It highlights issues of authority and expertise, different modes of representation and visibility, and the importance of infrastructure. Finally, the introduction briefly describes each of the four papers in the special section and draws parallels among them. Digital technologies blur previous clear-cut dichotomies between producers and users of data and reconfigure the distribution of agency among living beings and technologies. They connect local practices and achievements of biodiversity monitoring with extended outcomes, produced by the transposition, and adaptation of practices or the interoperability of data in larger infrastructures.
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lorna Heaton
Lorna Heaton is a professor of communication at the Univeristé de Montréal. She is interested in collaborative work practices and the performativity of communications technologies. Her research focuses on the organisational aspects of collaborative work, particularly the interplay between collaborative digital technologies and their uses.
Florian Charvolin
Florian Charvolin is a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Max Weber Centre in Lyon, France. His research centres on environmental monitoring of biodiversity through citizen science and air pollution through the local use of measuring technologies.