Citizen Scientist or Citizen Technician: A Case Study of Communication on One Citizen Science Platform

The different types of engagement in citizen science produce potentially different outcomes. Although participation in citizen science can increase volunteer scientific literacy, recent research suggests that this does not occur in projects in which volunteers only contribute data. We performed a content analysis of CitSci.org project descriptions (n = 152) along with project descriptions found on hyperlinked websites (n = 23), analyzing volunteer tasks according to cognitive order as defined by Bloom’s Taxonomy, an educational framework designed to classify an individual’s depth of knowledge. We also considered who benefits from the tasks that volunteers performed. We found that most projects described volunteers as performing (low order) tasks and described the benefits to citizen science projects. Our analysis indicates that project managers describe the scientific process in a limited capacity, which has implications for volunteer scientific literacy. That said, our study is limited in that we did not confirm the findings with project managers who wrote task descriptions. It is also important to recognize that our findings investigate communication on a single citizen science platform and are not representative of the entire field of citizen science. However, it serves as a first step to better understand how scientists and project managers communicate about citizen science.