Does eBird Contribute to Environmental Citizenship? A Discursive Analysis

Environmental citizen science projects could play a role in fomenting environmental citizenship. Yet, the extent to which existing environmental citizen science projects contribute to environmental citizenship remains unexplored. Therefore, we apply a discursive analysis to one of the largest environmental citizen science projects in the world, eBird, to assess how its 'institutional technologies' contribute to the formulation of specific social roles (e.g., user, eBirder) and environmental objects (e.g., species, hotspots, checklists). From this analysis, we discuss how these social roles and objects relate to the concept of environmental citizenship. Specifically, we show that eBird strengthens an "eBirder" community but maintains separations between researchers and ebirders; encourages attachment to birds but primarily through identification and competition; and connects eBirders to some key environmental issues but not others. We demonstrate that eBird discourse contributes to defining what rights and duties exist for eBirders as well as to which kind of environment eBirders gain citizenship.

Kasperowski, Dick,1959Gothenburg University,Göteborgs universitet,Institutionen för filosofi, lingvistik och vetenskapsteori,Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science(Swepub:gu)xkasdi (författare)
van der Wal, René (författare)
Göteborgs universitetInstitutionen för filosofi, lingvistik och vetenskapsteori (creator_code:org_t)

Ingår i:Sea, Sky, Land, Endangered Ecologies, Solidarities. Society for the Social Study of Science, 4S 2023, Honolulu, November 8-11, 2023

Av författaren/redakt...: Peterson, Jesse; Kasperowski, Dic ...; van der Wal, Ren ...

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