Participative Internet and Science: Are Amateurs ‘Disrupting Every Activity They Touch’?

The outset of the so-called social internet – internet technologies that enabled greater user participation – a couple of decades ago brought about some excitement as well as concerns that amateurs will disrupt ‘every activity they touch’ (Tapscott and Williams, 2006; Keen, 2007). The initial domain of concern was (and still is) within the areas of the creation and dissemination of information and knowledge, including science.

The involvement of non-professionals in domains previously dominated by professionals can be conceptualized as the participation of users/consumers in the creation of the content/product they themselves consume/use. It can be understood as a user’s productive practice, or prosumption (the convergence of production and consumption). The concept of prosumption was employed by some researchers to describe the activities of users in the online space (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010).

The aim of the presentation is to examine some forms of internet-enabled participation of prosumers in the process of the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge, with the particular focus on whether their involvement deviates from the values and accepted routines in the institutional science. In other words, do amateurs involved in activities related to science and the dissemination of knowledge disrupt or transform the practice in some particular manner, as pronounced by the early commentators of the social internet? Or, on the contrary, do they adhere to the institutional norms? The presentation discusses the findings of the analysis of cases of scientific and knowledge dissemination activities outside the institutional science (semi-structured interviews). It focuses on motivations, routines, values, and understanding of authority and authorship of internet users that participate in such activities.