Citizen science is an approach that is used increasingly to produce data on flora and fauna. Such data can provide an understanding of the trends for preventing and addressing climate and environmental issues as well as acting as a base for civil servants’ decision-making in natural investigation cases. In this setting, the present thesis aims to unfold information practices in biodiversity citizen science in Sweden, involving volunteer participants who focus on the sustainability of biological variety, and to explicate the role and meaning of information practices for the activities in which the participants engage. This compilation thesis comprises one methodological and three empirical articles.
Through a practice theory approach emphasising sociomaterial, relational and situated focal points, the study, which altogether comprises three substudies, draws on a theoretical framework encompassing established concepts from practice theory and science and technology studies concerning variations of practices, boundary objects, epistemic objects and inscriptions. The project presents a methodological combination of trace ethnography and traditional qualitative methods such as interviews and observations for investigating information practices in relation to information systems. The study’s methodology is illustrated by two of the thesis’ three substudies to enable investigations of time and spatiality, where metadata are explored as traces of practices.
The study has as its focus the variations of information practices enacted by participants engaged in biodiversity citizen science. Depicted is a nexus of practices including observing, identifying, reporting, collecting and curating species as well as validating and making decisions based on species reports. The variations of practices imply that mundane species data production is enacted through material objects, that competition among participants has impacts on data comprehensiveness and that variations in the apprehension of validated species reports can lead to issues for the assessment of data validity. The study also emphasises notions concerning credibility, authority and validity among participants. It is demonstrated that credibility is assessed through peer monitoring as well as by participants assigned to validator roles. It is also shown that validity is a desirable value which can be achieved through transforming observations of species to data in relation to notions of what comprises credible reports. Moreover, the study shows that report enhancement can be accomplished by supplementing reports with objects of trust such as photographs and additional metadata. Credibility, authority and validity is concluded to be constructed in a distributed fashion by participants and a rich assortment of sociomaterial practices and tools.
By coupling trace ethnography and traditional qualitative research methods, the study also delves into how participants in a botanical citizen science field excursion enact information practices in relation to the material qualities of tools. Ongoing negotiations occur during participants’ fieldwork, which is carried out in relation to tools such as loupes and applications as well as taxonomic features in information systems for reporting species observations. Results here indicate that the knowledge formed during fieldwork is both constrained and appended when translated to species data through information systems such as Artportalen. The information practices are understood as requiring negotiations among participants as the material tools are being used. Through messy and entwined practices, streamlined and tidy species data are eventually formed.
In the concluding discussion, responding to the aim of the thesis, it is shown that the interrelated but varying, messy, materially constrained and negotiation-infused features of the study participants’ information practices play a key role in the shaping of voluntary monitoring and documentation of species in Sweden. While biodiversity citizen science data comprise neatly structured representations of conducted species observations, exportable for analysis and decision-making, participants’ enactments of information practices are not straightforward or direct but should rather be seen as taking winding paths from fieldwork to species reports. Accentuating the information practices enacted, the competitive tendency among participants to report rare sightings and the participants’ joint formation of trustworthiness and authority, this thesis nuances current understandings of volunteer efforts for biodiversity monitoring. As such, the mentioned disorderliness of the information practices can create bias issues in the shape of participant inclinations to report unusual, or previously unseen, species. At the same time, supplying a large number of valid reports is an important aspect for the participants. Similarly, the tools used for reporting are occasionally skewed towards certain species groups and are not always appropriately configured for recording the plethora of fieldwork activities currently in use. Based on these findings, it is proposed that consideration should be given to the ways in which the current variations of information practices are enacted, entwined and conformed. This, in turn, can lead to strategies that pave the way for a richer understanding of report validation, help mitigate possible data biases, and support the development of feature-rich, easy-to-use tools for reporting in the field.
Borås: Högskolan i Borås, 2024.
Biodiversity citizen science, information practices, practice theory, trace ethnography