“Det är inte Rocket Science att göra Science”. En kvalitativ studie om hur Citizen Science-plattformar organiserar sig för att motivera till deltagande

Abstract

Facilitated by the breakthrough of the internet, new ways of organizing internet-based projects that harness the power of the crowds are becoming increasingly common. Today there are ways of using the crowd as paid labour, as funders of your new project ventures and even for helping scientists doing science. Staying true to its traditional principles of objectivity and trustworthiness while asking the crowd to contribute, crowd generated “Citizen Science” does not provide even the slightest amount of pay in exchange for the time and effort put in by their contributors. Surely there can not be many people willing to do such a thing voluntarily? Actually, practice is showing the exact opposite with contributions counted in their millions among the more popular Citizen Science projects. But, if money is not, what really is it that motivates people to contribute? This study aims to provide a part of the picture capable of answering the question of what is actually motivating people to contribute to Citizen Science. We have chosen to focus on trying to explain the way these projects are organizing their web platforms based on a framework of motivational theories. The existence of different aspects of those theories, considered to create the bases of a motivating task, are analysed in each of the four Citizen Science-projects studied by the means of qualitative content analysis. The projects of study were chosen among those having led to the most scientific articles published, namely Galaxy Zoo, FoldIt, Globe at Night and Nest Watch. The projects were carefully analysed by two individuals independently following a strict manual to ensure objective and trustworthy results. Our conclusions say that some correlation between the organization of the studied Citizen Science platforms and the theory behind motivating tasks exists. The strongest one found is connected to the possibility of participants to contribute to science being clearly emphasized by the platforms as well as the theory. Other connections that were found consider feedback, communication of goals, competence required, clarity of the task boundaries and the usage of social forums.