ABSTRACT
Studies of online interaction have rarely examined processes of (de)legitimizing professional expertise in participatory digital spaces, or connected them with broader themes of politics and community. This chapter explores practitioners’ vernacular rhetoric in the emerging field of environmental sustainability in an online discussion thread on LinkedIn. Through close textual analysis, it demonstrates how sustainability practitioners deliberate online what counts as expertise in their field—shifting strategically across online/offline norms of decorum, political correctness and professional behavior to establish some forms of expertise as legitimate and to devalue others. Even as the online context frames the pace and tone of deliberation, conceptions of sustainability as a “civic science” destabilizes elite and professional expertise, so that sustainability expertise is layered, shifting and contested along three episodes—evaluation, competition and inversion—that both challenge and legitimize professional norms. This chapter thus highlights intersections among the political, personal and professional realms in digital cultures.
