University of Birmingham, UK.
Public Underst Sci. 2024 Feb;33(2):142-157. doi: 10.1177/09636625231203470. Epub 2023 Oct 20.
Citizen science is often celebrated. We interrogate this position through exploration of socio-technoscientific phenomena that mirror citizen science yet are disaligned with its ideals. We term this 'Dark Citizen Science'. We identify five conceptual dimensions of citizen science - and . Dark citizen science mirrors traditional citizen science in and but diverges in and . We compare two Internet-based categorisation processes, Citizen Science project Galaxy Zoo and Dark Citizen Science project Google's reCAPTCHA. We highlight that the reader has, likely unknowingly, provided unpaid technoscientific labour to Google. We apply insights from our analysis of dark citizen science to traditional citizen science. Linking citizen science as practice and normative democratic ideal ignores how some science-citizen configurations actively pit practice against ideal. Further, failure to fully consider the implications of citizen science for science and society allows exploitative elements of citizen science to evade the sociological gaze.
公民科学常被称赞。我们通过探索与公民科学相似但与其理念不符的社会技术科学现象来质疑这一立场。我们称之为“暗公民科学”。我们确定了公民科学的五个概念维度——和。暗公民科学在和方面与传统公民科学相似，但在和方面存在分歧。我们比较了两个基于互联网的分类过程，公民科学项目 Galaxy Zoo 和暗公民科学项目谷歌的 reCAPTCHA。我们强调读者可能在不知不觉中向谷歌提供了无偿的技术科学劳动。我们将暗公民科学分析的见解应用于传统公民科学。将公民科学作为实践和规范民主理想联系起来，忽略了一些科学-公民配置如何积极地将实践与理想对立起来。此外，未能充分考虑公民科学对科学和社会的影响，使得公民科学的剥削性因素逃避了社会学的关注。
