ABSTRACT
In light of the increased recognition among researchers and science policy actors of the capacity (and necessity) among the public to be actively involved in research, this chapter explores the epistemological ideals invoked as the sciences configure to accommodate outsiders as citizen scientists. The chapter offers suggestions on how to arrive at a “social epistemology of inclusion” of outsiders into scientific practice through digital mediation. Here, we propose studying the “epistemic cultures of contribution”, that is, the ideals and values of citizen science projects as they are enacted by their initiators and contributors. We find that tensions exist in such epistemic cultures of contribution that reveal some characteristics of the social epistemologies of inclusion, as outsiders become contributors in scientific work. While contributors might be mobilised as a highly distributed epistemic collective with perceptual abilities, on forums and blogs the cultural and interpretational aspects of citizen science become evident. Here, contributors, through the possibilities of serendipitous discoveries, in lengthy discussions on how to find and use additional epistemological resources, realise themselves as individual epistemic subjects.
