This PhD project is qualitative and exploratory. It contributes to STS and feminist STS investigations of scientific practices by looking at citizen science practices, particularly in contributory biodiversity programs that use digital technologies for data collection.

The research design involved two case studies in Australia: one program monitors frog presence in Melbourne and surrounding areas, and the other monitors beach nesting birds (particularly Hooded Plovers) and threats for their survival in coastal areas of the country. Both programs have run for over 20 years and have shifted from analogue technologies (such as cassette recordings and pen-and-paper surveys) to digital surveys for data collection (a frog app, and a bird app + a beach nesting bird desktop portal).

The thesis manuscript is currently available to University of Melbourne staff and students only: https://hdl.handle.net/11343/360875 (note that a login is required). The embargo will be lifted after the empirical chapters are published.

To practice reciprocity with people who contributed to the research (Iniesta-Arandia et al., 2016), I wrote a summary of findings for citizen science practitioners and participants, and shared it with all the volunteers and program organizers I interviewed.

More on methods

I interviewed 38 citizen science volunteers and organizers from both case studies, and I took them to be experts of their own everyday practice (Heuts & Mol, 2013). I then transcribed the resulting 45 hours of interview records and coded them using Nvivo. I immersed myself in citizen science by becoming a frog monitoring participant, later monitoring along with other volunteers, and participating in trainings and debrief sessions from both citizen science programs. The (digital) immersion meant I also joined 6 Facebook groups related with my two case studies, and I observed posts and interactions in them for over two years. Additionally, I navigated through citizen science infrastructures and I analyzed content from official citizen science materials, such as field guides and other training documents, as well as the official apps and platforms of the two programs.