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Observations of online citizen science projects have shown that interaction between participants can occur in a variety of settings, often in online forums, or synchronous internet relay chat16. Project blogs written by scientists can also provide a venue for interaction between the project scientists and the citizen scientists, and participants are able to comment on new posts17. The topics that are discussed can vary widely. For example, new participants can ask those who are more experienced questions relating to the project task or about the project more generally18. Participants may also use them as tools to interact more generally with each other.

Previous research has shown that participating in online communities and interacting with other participants can be an important motivator for some participants in online citizen science projects (Holohan and Garg, 2005, Raddick et al., 2013). Jennett et al. (2013) refer to ‘sociability’ in online citizen science projects, and suggest that participants may be motivated to take part because of the social interaction with other participants, or with scientists. They state that this interaction may help foster feelings of community and that there is potential for many different types of sociability to develop given the right project platform, although how participants interact within online citizen science

16

Internet relay chat (also known as IRC) facilitates transfer of messages in the form of text. Applications are based on a client/server model of networking and are used to enable synchronous communication in a group setting as well as between two individuals.

17

The Galaxy Zoo Blog: http://blog.galaxyzoo.org/.

18 _{The GalaxyZoo forum has examples of this:}

41 projects has not been described or explored in much depth in other studies (Holohan and Garg, 2005, Mugar et al., 2014).

Holohan and Garg (2005) explored interaction between participants within two distributed computing projects (SETI@home and the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search). Through surveys and interviews with participants, they found that social

interaction with other participants was one of the most important aspects of involvement and a strong motivator for over half of respondents. They also claim that interactions were stronger within the various project teams as participants worked together to generate the most points and improve their ranking on the project leader board. However, little detail or analysis was presented relating to these interactions.

Recent work by Mugar et al. (2014) has explored interaction between citizen scientists relating to learning the project task on two different online citizen science projects, Planet Hunters and Seafloor Explorers. They state that in order to sustain groups in the long- term, newcomers to the group need to learn how to be effective participants. Their work details how new project participants learn about the tasks by examining ‘work in

progress’ through the online discussion threads, and by asking more experienced

participants for advice. This is known as ‘legitimate peripheral participation’, a term first used by Lave and Wenger in their work on ‘communities of practice’ (for example in skilled trades such as midwives, tailors or butchers) (Lave and Wenger, 1991).

This work describes the process of development from newcomer to an accomplished insider, as community members become more familiar with the tasks and practices of that community. In a community of practice, joint sense-making and problem solving enhances the formation of interpersonal ties (McLure Wasko and Faraj, 2005). Members, or practitioners, develop a shared repertoire of resources, experiences, tools and other

42 ways of addressing recurring problems (Wenger, 2006, Hanson-Smith, 2013). Over the past decade or so, further thinking about communities of practice has extended the meaning of the term to include online communities and interactions (Makriyanni and De Liddo, 2010, Hanson-Smith, 2013). Such communities of practice may be of relevance to online citizen science projects, and could result through sustained interactions between participants.

While interaction between project participants may generate ‘sociability’ it may also form the basis for co-operation or collaboration between participants. Co-operation and collaboration are two distinct processes. The main difference is whether the tasks are divided up and individually completed (i.e. co-operation), or whether they are completed together through dialogue (i.e. collaboration) (Paulus, 2005). Co-operation involves a division of labour and possibly task specialisation, and individuals take responsibility for their part of the final product. In contrast, collaboration is a co-ordinated, synchronous activity, in which there is a shared concept of a problem and a process of shared creation (Dillenbourg, 1999).

Much previous work on collaboration and co-operation has come from the literature on education, and has focussed on the role of collaboration and co-operation in learning both in ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ environments (Dillenbourg, 1999, Holliman and Scanlon, 2006, Lai, 2011, Paulus, 2005). Online citizen science projects are occasionally referred to as ‘collaborations’ between citizen and professional scientist, although there is, as yet, little documented evidence exploring how (or if) participants in these projects collaborate, or co-operate to achieve the research aims of the project.

While there are many opportunities to interact with others taking part in an online citizen science project, there is little information relating to what proportion of participants take

43 part in these interactions. This research has explored interaction between participants in greater detail. For each of the selected projects in this research, data has been collected relating to who takes part in online interaction, how they interact and why they interact. Interaction has been considered with regard to motivation to participate, and within the wider context of how participants contribute to online citizen science projects.

Opportunities for collaboration and co-operation have also been explored. The following research question focuses on this area.

Research question 4: How and why do project participants interact online?

Not only has interaction between citizen scientists been considered, but also the

interaction between citizen scientists and those who manage the projects (scientists and developers.