Abstract
Today, science is expected to open up to publics and be more responsible. At the same time, the legitimacy and autonomy of academic work are increasingly challenged. Public participation in science constitutes a critical site of these ambivalent dynamics, while it also becomes questionable as an emancipatory practice and as an analytical concept. To examine these reconfigurations of science–society relations, this article proposes to study the doing and undoing of symbolic boundaries by bringing the concepts of boundary work, boundary objects, and boundary organizations closer together. Empirically, new insights are provided on citizen science as an emblematic approach that unites and reshapes diverse forms of participatory research. The analysis moves beyond single projects tracing three boundary management practices that propel the consolidation of citizen science at the field level: (1) rhetorically identifying as double promise of innovative science and societally useful participation; (2) infrastructuring collaboration among projects through adaptive qualification; and (3) organizing practitioners as a movement within institutions. The entanglements of those boundary practices give rise to the high connectivity as well as fragility of a field that currently emerges as a prototype of science–society relations.
Introduction
The changing relationship between science and society is a central topic in science and technology studies (STS). Researchers have identified growing possibilities as well as demands for science communication, public participation, and responsible innovation. At the same time, new challenges are emerging for the autonomy and legitimacy of academic work and expertise (Edwards 2010; Frahm, Doezema, and Pfotenhauer 2022; Moore et al. 2011). These developments reflect broader expectations that science should engage with publics and provide relevant knowledge about urgent global challenges, while maintaining rigor, quality, and accountability. The tension between opening up science to society and protecting professional standards is intensified by the growing use of digital technologies. For instance, incorporating sensors, social media, and artificial intelligence rearranges the ground rules of research, publication, and evaluation (cf. Neuberger et al. 2023; Strasser and Edwards 2017). Digital media use also exposes science to greater public scrutiny and amplifies skepticism as well as post-truth narratives, contributing to ongoing renegotiations of societal contracts concerning epistemic and democratic representation (cf. Grundmann 2013; Marres 2018; Nelson 2025).
A key site of such reconfigurations in science–society relations concerns ties between individuals and larger collectives, publics, and democracy. For some time, STS discussions have critically examined this nexus in terms of participation, associating it with hopes for the democratization of science (and democracy) (cf. Chilvers and Kearnes 2016; Jasanoff 2003; Kelty 2020). However, recent works suggest that participation is becoming a problematic chiffre for democratization and emancipatory practice. Over the past few decades, approaches to citizen deliberation on science policy matters have become increasingly institutionalized and thus turned into global technologies of participation (Voß and Amelung 2016). Participation experiments also multiply across research and application contexts expediting the ambivalences between meaningful, generative engagement vis-à-vis a potential emptying and undermining of democracy (Bogner 2012; Lezaun, Marres, and Tironi 2017). One important reason for participation's limited success in making science, technology, and expertise more democratic and responsible is the lingering realist assumptions about participation and publics (Chilvers and Kearnes 2020). Another factor is that digital technologies, which increasingly become a key infrastructure across all spheres of social life, rely heavily on user involvement through micro-actions. Marres et al. (2025) have argued that this leads to participation being infrastructuralized—a sociotechnical reality more than a normative duty, indispensable for the functioning of digitally mediated societies, and profoundly ambivalent in its redistribution of responsibilities. In addition to far-reaching implications for contemporary science and democracy, the transformation of participation from a solution into a problem also challenges its role for STS analyses (Neale et al. 2025).
Our paper contributes to these discussions with a conceptual proposal as well as by providing deeper insights into an emblematic empirical site. Conceptually, we address the question of how to study participation without reinvoking realist assumptions nor abandoning STS commitments to emancipatory roles of publics for shaping society and democracy. We do so by looking through an analytical lens of symbolic boundaries between science and society, and their renegotiations. For this purpose, the article leverages the concepts of boundary work, boundary objects, and boundary organizations. To contribute to extending the analytical value of these canonical STS tools, our paper suggests bringing them closer together to investigate the simultaneity as well as the interplay of rhetorical, material, and formalization practices for managing boundaries. Empirically, we examine the renegotiation of science–society relations with a focus on citizen science (CS). This approach to public participation in science (Kinchy 2024) serves as a microcosm—a “laboratory”—for studying how science is adapting to demands of being societally responsive while upholding professional standards.
CS as an Emblematic Site of Shifting Science–Society Relations
Science has always been an endeavor distributed across professional scientists and many others (cf. Latour 1987). Visibilities and responsibilities for insiders in relation to outsiders are subject to historically changing cultural values and power dynamics. They also vary across fields of knowledge with their distinctive epistemic and socio-material foundations of inclusion in science (Göbel forthcoming). The contemporary approach to CS began to take shape in the late 20th century (cf. Strasser et al. 2019). It regards amateur research and science popularization activities with a view to involving outsiders as contributors to research tasks. In recent years, CS has experienced rapid growth and international distribution (Kinchy 2024). It also expanded beyond traditional areas, like ornithology and astronomy, to encompass a wide range of scientific disciplines, including ecology, climatology, genetics, public health, social sciences, and humanities (Haklay et al. 2021a; Kullenberg and Kasperowski 2016). CS projects tackle complex research questions, such as monitoring air quality, investigating rare diseases, or identifying drivers of social inequality. The growing popularity of CS can be attributed to several factors: The increasing accessibility of technology, including smartphones and affordable sensors, allows more people to actively participate in data collection and analysis. Online platforms provide a means for individuals from diverse backgrounds and locations to contribute to scientific research transcending geographical boundaries and handling vast amounts of data. The movement has also been fueled by more accessible scientific knowledge and the recognition of the value of diverse perspectives (Kasperowski and Hillman 2018; Mahr and Dickel 2019).
Today, CS is not only embraced by grassroots initiatives and community organizations but also anchored within scientific institutions and public policy bodies. For instance, the European Union (EU) started awarding CS funding, and government agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries draw on CS in environmental protection work (Dosemagen and Parker 2019). There is a growing recognition of the need to integrate CS into the fabric of formal scientific structures, ensuring long-term sustainability and quality assurance (Heigl et al. 2019a; Vohland et al. 2021a). The institutionalization of CS has led to a growing body of academic literature, which includes topics such as what CS is, how to do it, and the different levels of engagement it affords (Blacker, Kimura, and Kinchy 2021; Eitzel et al. 2017; Haklay et al. 2021a). Nonetheless, CS remains a contested concept with blurred boundaries (Haklay et al. 2021b) uniting “several different modes of social epistemologies” (Kasperowski and Kullenberg 2019, 2). At times CS appears as a top-down policy agenda; at others as sustained by grassroots organizing; as a new successful approach for public engagement in research, or just another buzzword. This raises questions: What qualifies CS as a distinct approach for facilitating science–society relations? What holds this diversity of projects together? Does institutionalization threaten “the valuable plurality of the Citizen Sciences” (Van Oudheusden et al. 2024)? And how do ambivalences of the infrastructuralization of participation take shape?
Beyond its specificities, CS constitutes a key field for investigating broader shifts in science–society relations. It combines various aspects also present in related developments, for example, trends toward open science (digital media, transformation of research workflows), responsible research and innovation (societal usefulness and responsiveness of science), participatory science communication (direct interaction with non-professional publics), or populist anti-scientism (reconfiguring participation and democracy). Exploring how the symbolic boundaries of science and society are reordered in CS thus also contributes to understanding wider transformations of science, publics, and their socio-technical mediation in contemporary societies.
Analyzing the Consolidation of CS Through a Lens of Boundary Management Practices
STS research has addressed CS most prominently in relation to local knowledge and environmental regulation (Allen 2018; Kuchinskaya 2019; Ottinger 2010), health (Del Savio, Prainsack, and Buyx 2016; Mayes 2024), and science communication (Giardullo et al. 2023; Horst, Davies, and Irwin 2017, 887f.). However, the majority of these works focuses on single projects, and political or democratic impacts of participation (Aronova 2017; Herzog and Lepenies 2022; Hess 2021). Questions of standardization and institutionalization are mostly addressed in terms of technology, like sensing devices (Nold 2017) or online platforms (Baudry, Tancoigne, and Strasser 2022). To go beyond single projects and explore more nuances of the social dynamics of institutionalization, this paper proposes a shift in perspective exploring CS as an entity “in the making” (Latour 1987). STS and social science research harbor a rich terminology for treating such entities (see Hackett et al. 2017 for an overview), including systems of professions (Abbott 1988), actor networks (Callon 1984; Latour 1987), or ecologies of participation (Chilvers and Kearnes 2016). We use the notion of “field” exploratively to consider CS as an emerging nexus of practice for establishing science–society relations.
The conceptual starting point for our analysis is symbolic boundaries, that is, “the lines that include and define some people, groups, and things while excluding others” (Lamont, Pendergrass, and Pachucki 2015, 850). They are meaningful cultural distinctions that are not given but created and negotiated by various social practices. Cultural distinctions can be drawn in diverse ways, shaping and imbuing entities with various meanings. They can be done and undone, maintained or dissolved (Hirschauer 2021). In science studies, Gieryn (1983) famously studied boundaries to investigate distinctions between science and non-science. He argues that scientists engage in boundary to establish authority, credibility, and autonomy for themselves and their respective fields. Practicing boundaries involves rhetorical strategies drawing distinctions between what is considered as science and what is not, demarcating the borders between disciplines as well as between science and other fields of activity (Gieryn 1983). We will use Gieryn's concept of boundary work as a point of departure and enrich it with two notions for deepening the study of CS. The first is the concept of boundary objects (Star and Griesemer 1989), which draws attention to how practicing boundaries goes beyond rhetorical strategies bringing into sight material and conceptual entities, which facilitate collaboration across boundaries. The second extension is the concept of boundary organizations (Guston 1999, 2001), to explore how boundary work and boundary objects are enabled and stabilized through formal organizations and new groups of professionals. This dimension of formalization practices also allows us a better view of the actors propelling and implicated in the institutionalization of CS.
Rather than theoretically integrating or directly applying these boundary concepts, we use them as heuristic tools in combination. This approach sensitizes our analysis to three dimensions of un/doing boundaries of the emerging field of CS, which manifest in related but distinct boundary management practices. We examine rhetorical practices of self-presentation in conjunction with material-conceptual practices of collaboration and formalizing practices of organization through three case studies. Considering these practices in relation to each other allows us to gain deeper insights into the consolidation of CS as a field and the broader digital infrastructuralization of participation (Marres et al. 2025). This methodological strategy can be used for engaging with and extending canonical concepts of boundaries and participation, to explore possible roles for STS now and into the future (cf. Neale et al. 2025).
Methods and Argument
To complement accounts of CS in a US context, we examine its institutionalization in Europe. The focus is on major CS initiatives at the EU level (self-presentations), in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (infrastructures) and Germany along with other EU countries (organizing), which had a path-building role between 2014 and 2024. The research undertaken for this paper encompassed distributed empirical work in a three-year project combining textual analysis (all case studies), ethnographic observations, and interviews (cases on infrastructuring and organizing).
First, we analyzed texts focusing on the distinctions they create, and the justifications provided for these distinctions. In this way, public documents (websites, handouts, research publications, videos) were studied as subjects of discursive and rhetorical practices that actively shape the field by enacting boundaries and legitimizing roles (cf. Gaonkar 1993; Gieryn 1983; Gross 2006). Texts (guidelines, policy papers, websites, online forms) played an important role as objects resulting from and at the same time shaping material-conceptual as well as formalization practices. Second, our multisited ethnographic work (cf. Marcus 1995) focused on how scientific and organizational activities are carried out and how these practices materialize in specific contexts, particularly in cross-project infrastructuring and organizing. From our prior research on single CS projects, we identified online platforms along with practitioner organizations as key sites of field-building. We therefore conducted participant observation at events (conferences, workshops, working group meetings) by CS networks (several at the European level, Austria, Germany, and Spain focused on coordination and advocacy work) and platforms (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland focused on development and implementation of quality criteria). Finally, we further contextualized the observed institutionalization practices through interviews (cf. Spradley 1979) with key actors identified in fieldwork. We conducted 16 interviews with a total of 18 participants (staff and members of CS platforms and organizations/networks; including two to three actors per platform with responsibility for criteria-based evaluation as well as eight project managers involved in networks in different countries and at the EU level). The interviews explored how these actors interpret their own history, role within the field, and their relations to the evolving boundaries of science and society.
Informed consent was ensured through transparent communication and ongoing negotiation with participants. Prior to interviews and ethnographic observation, participants received clear information about the aims of the study, the use of data, confidentiality, and their right to withdraw at any time without consequences. During fieldwork, researchers remained attentive to participants’ comfort and autonomy, treating consent as a continuous process rather than a one-time formal procedure. All collected data were handled in accordance with data protection regulations and anonymized where appropriate.
In what follows, we observe that rhetorical practices position CS as innovative research tying the promises of high-quality science and addressing societal needs into each other. Material-conceptual practices shift direct interaction among projects into object-mediated and adaptive forms of collaboration, with platforms at their center. Formalization practices of temporary and voluntary boundary organizations professionalize the management of Citizen Science, and thereby of science–society boundaries, as a movement within institutions. To conclude, we discuss how the plurality of CS is enabled and restricted in the interplay of boundary management practices, and point out potential for further empirical research and conceptual development.
Communicating Boundaries: CS as Double Promise
The nomenclature of Citizen Science is one of the central sites for establishing the field (Eitzel et al. 2017). The direct link this concept forges between science and citizens has quickly made CS a rising star in public engagement and at the same time provoked criticism from everywhere. Can non-professionals do sound science? Does the idea of citizenship adequately represent participation in times of global trouble, inequity, and backlash against democracy? Why not refine existing methodologies rather than launch yet another buzzword? We will show how rhetorical practices position CS as an answer to such questions by producing an overarching identity (despite its diverse forms) of academic science relying on non-professional contributors and addressing societal challenges through scientific knowledge.
For this purpose, we examine the rhetorical practices of CS in textual self-presentations. Due to the unfinished institutionalization of CS, self-presentations are not yet black-boxed and self-evident (Latour 1987). Their legitimacy is in the process of negotiation and depends on other actors in academic science, politics, and the public to buy in and provide support. Gieryn (1983, 1994) and Abbott (1995) regard communicative self-presentation as boundary work, as the strategic initiatives of actors that establish the identity of a field of research or practice by highlighting its formative interests, distinguishing it from others and claiming a jurisdiction. Gieryn's analytical heuristic stipulates three assumptions: (1) Communicative self-presentations are always created in relation to an outside. (2) These communication contexts shape how a phenomenon is construed. (3) Actors use self-presentation strategically to establish and expand their field addressing various contexts. In this way, we can read self-presentations of CS as part of a symbolic struggle for cultural representation of science, participation, and their interlinkages. By producing certain categorizations, unifications, and distinctions, they perform an un/doing of boundaries that communicatively shapes CS as a field. We have examined English-language texts central to the institutionalization of CS in Europe: two anthologies with contributions by researchers and project managers, as well as the website and other documents of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA), a non-governmental organization for the promotion of CS in the EU.
Innovative Research Through Participation
What is Citizen Science? Citizen science broadly refers to the active engagement of the general public in scientific research tasks. Citizen Science is a growing practice in which scientists and citizens collaborate to produce new knowledge for science and society. (Vohland et al. 2021a, 1)
This opening definition in a CS handbook positions CS as compatible with science by drawing up a self-image that aligns with characteristic scientific work processes (research organized into tasks), objectives (generating new knowledge), and actors (scientists). The placement within science is also emphasized by the image of “inviting the public in” (instead of promoting, for instance, the engagement of science in public issues) which mobilizes a scientistic framing of public participation widespread in academia and public policy (cf. Wynne 2007). Unlike “usual” science, however, CS is flagged out as a participatory research practice that involves non-professionals. The “general public,” which is typically positioned beyond the boundaries of science as one of its others, is framed here as a collaboration partner individualized in the figure of the citizen. Unlike existing medical, social, and cultural research and their ostensibly “passive” research objects, CS participants are designated as “active” research protagonists. By highlighting the active engagement of a citizen public in collaborative research, CS differentiates itself from non-participatory forms of science, and also from non-research-performing kinds of participation. Prominent examples for the latter are activities described as “public communication of science” or “public engagement with science and technology” focusing on the transmission of existing knowledge or political deliberation (cf. Horst, Davies, and Irwin 2017). In CS, the value of participation for society is tied to the production of new knowledge, framed as an innovation when compared to previous approaches for public engagement.
The interests holding the field together are marked as primarily scientific. A second self-presentation details this positioning as “science, but not-the-usual science.” [C]itizen science expands public participation in science and supports alternative models of knowledge production. This includes strengthening scientific research by engaging with a variety of topics and information sources, and fostering cross- or trans-disciplinary knowledge production….A common, shared goal is to collect and analyse information that is scientifically valuable. (Hecker et al. 2018, 2)
Societal Relevance Through Science
Beyond opportunities for knowledge generation, CS offers an additional layer of promise that extends beyond its scientific foundation. This can be observed by examining self-representations in public and policy-oriented texts: Citizen science is an “umbrella” term that describes a variety of ways in which the public participate in science. The main characteristics are that: (1) citizens are actively involved in research, in partnership or collaboration with scientists or professionals; and (2) there is a genuine outcome, such as new scientific knowledge, conservation action or policy change. (European Citizen Science Association 2024) [C]itizen science offers innovative potential at the science–society interface by drawing in many millions of participants worldwide….Citizen science can therefore positively influence society by providing opportunities for learning, empowerment, enjoyment of nature, social engagement or enhanced scientific capital….Collaboration with members of society also offers the opportunity for scientists to make their research more relevant and to extend its impact. (Hecker et al. 2018, 7)
Un/Doing Boundaries of Science and Society
By shaping the category of CS in discursive negotiations—linking it to professional science and citizenship (undoing boundaries), while distinguishing it from “usual” research, science communication, and political deliberation (doing boundaries)—relations between science and society are reconfigured. The remixed identity of CS as innovative and societally useful research intertwines science and citizens in two directions: On the one hand, science is re-envisaged as also based on the involvement of nonprofessionals. On the other hand, doing research is framed as another way of exercising citizenship addressing individual and collective needs. This double promise, along with the positioning of CS as a composite practice with many variants, contributes to the generativity of this approach.
Infrastructuring Boundaries: Adaptive Qualification of CS Platforms and Projects
Now, we turn to the material and conceptual practices establishing CS as a field. Our focus is on online platforms. Visiting the website of a CS platform is a quick and common way to find out about the approach or taking part in projects. Zooniverse (2026) has become the epitome of “people-powered research” online. SciStarter (2026) also invites outdoor activities. Pictures of children and adults engaging with smartphones and other devices greet visitors as examples for how it looks like when “people like you are…helping scientists document plant species” or “using sensors to monitor air quality.” Such online platforms are an important feature of the infrastructures making the programmatic link between citizens and science actionable in practice. They connect projects to volunteers as well as funders, politicians, media, and others. We show below how platforms facilitate such connections by turning rhetorical generativity into pathways for mutual adaptability.
For this purpose, we use the notion of boundary objects (Star and Griesemer 1989) as a heuristic. It explains how a particular class of objects, material and/or conceptual, mediate “cooperation without consensus” (Star 1993, 93) by coordinating the meaning repertoires and interests of actors from different social worlds without merging them: (1) Boundary objects rely on the standardization of procedures for collaborative work. (2) They realize many-to-many translations interrelating multiple passage points (Callon 1984; Callon and Law 1982) that each maintain autonomy (Star and Griesemer 1989, 389f.). (3) Various boundary objects combined with each other and across scales—temporal, geographical—can come to function as boundary infrastructure “when the tension between local and global is resolved” (Star and Ruhleder 1996, 114). Drawing on this perspective, we analyze standards used by CS platforms as material-conceptual practices mediating boundaries of the emerging field by regulating who can (not) do CS and on what terms. Although the standards we examine also manifest as texts, they are not primarily studied for their rhetorical function, but as categorial and physical connectors creating intelligibility for collaborations. In contrast to studies on the “platformization” of volunteer participation (Baudry, Tancoigne, and Strasser 2022; Hagen 2020), we are interested in field-level affordances and effects of standardization between various CS activities. For that purpose, we examine national CS platforms that publicly display projects from various disciplines and promote CS in a country. Our findings will be illustrated for the case of Österreich forscht (“Austria researches”) (2026a), one of the first platforms of this type, which has been active in shaping standardization debates in the field (Heigl et al. 2019a).
Quality Criteria for Projects
In the early days, project managers and operators of CS network websites needed to know each other to coordinate. As part of institutionalizing the field, networks turned definitions of CS into material–conceptual standards for selecting and displaying projects online, thereby shifting direct negotiations into object-mediated (co-)operation. For Österreich forscht, one important standard is a collection of “quality criteria for CS projects” (Heigl et al. 2018). They operationalize the distinction between “CS” and “non-CS,” and bring many different activities of participatory research together under the generative umbrella of CS as similar in kind but different in character.
The platform’s standards perform this ordering by turning CS into an ideal type (Star and Griesemer 1989, 410) through a series of steps that are oriented by the notion of quality. First, quality is defined by what it does not include: projects run solely by professionals and engaging volunteers only in answering surveys, having data collected on them, or passive resource provision (Heigl et al. 2018, 3). The criteria are thus established as a boundary object denying platform access in certain cases and opening passage for everything else. This move of disqualification is precise in sorting out, while maintaining interpretative flexibility regarding which practices may count as CS for, and by, using the platform. In a second step, quality is defined through “minimum standards” for projects to be listed. Rather than promoting excellence and thereby hierarchization, here, quality refers to a lowest common denominator. Like the rhetorical presentations of CS, platform standards combine research and other goals: There must be a stated scientific question, hypothesis or goal that can be answered, tested or achieved with the project [and t]here must be an added value for all participants, both citizen scientists and professional scientists. (Heigl et al. 2018, 5) Citizen Scientists must be involved during at least one project element. Common elements of research projects include: Search for a topic and formulation of research questions, Method design, Data collection, Data analysis and interpretation, Publication and communication of results, Project governance. (Heigl et al. 2018, 5)
Listing Procedures for Platforms
Listing a participatory research activity on a CS platform involves filling, reviewing, and publishing webforms with project information. For the Austrian case we examine, the quality criteria have been turned into an online questionnaire that provides platform access. It translates the conceptual grid of CS and project subtypes into a technically mediated evaluation procedure—a standardized form (Star and Griesemer 1989, 411). The process starts at the platform website with an invitation and a set of instructions. Do you run or participate in a citizen science project? This project could also be listed on Österreich forscht….How does the listing process work? The first step is to determine whether the project meets the quality criteria for citizen science projects. (Österreich forscht 2026b)
Quality criteria are thus operationalized in practices that qualify participatory research activities as CS and vice versa. In this process, platforms act as a passageway turning relations among various projects into relations between individual projects and the platform, which assembles a field. Monopolizing control over field access creates an asymmetry between platforms as custodians of quality criteria, separate from projects as those who need to apply. However, the asymmetry is not performed as a classic hierarchy. National CS platforms position themselves as offering various services to CS projects, including access to public attention, free webhosting, advertising through platform channels, and so on (Österreich forscht 2026b). This distribution of tasks was also observed during workshops dedicated to the creation of quality criteria and listing procedures. For fields in formation, platforms do not yet hold gatekeeper positions, they still need to prove their worth. The asymmetry thus manifests as a professional–client relation, where platforms offer support to apply the abstract rules of the emerging field to the specific (disciplinary, participatory, etc.) situations of client activities (cf. Abbott 1988, 56-62). Rhetorical generativity thus becomes actualized as assistance in and customization of the process of boundary crossing to gain access to broader publics for participation and support.
Un/Doing Boundaries of Participatory Research Activities
Ordering the operation of CS materially and conceptually by introducing national platforms and standards, relations between various practices of participatory research are reconfigured. Quality criteria and listing procedures generate intelligibility enabling collaborations between a multitude of heterogeneous actors in the name of CS (undoing boundaries). They shift the direct interaction among projects necessary to operate a field into object-mediated forms of collaboration, with platforms as boundary infrastructures (doing boundaries). Generating innovative and societally useful research thus becomes re-distributed (cf. Marres 2012) between CS projects doing the groundwork and platforms hosting, aggregating and displaying certified CS activities in a process of adaptive qualification. When all sides buy in, the tension between local participatory research activities and the overarching field of CS is resolved, and national CS platforms become infrastructure.
Organizing Boundaries: CS as Movement Within Institutions
In the previous sections, we glimpsed organizational contexts that shape CS at the field level (for single projects, see Franzoni, Poetz, and Sauermann 2022). CS definitions were developed in publications from ECSA, an international organization like the African CS Association, CitizenScience.Asia, or the CS Global Partnership. The quality criteria and platform were created by a national CS practitioner network, which have formed in several countries such as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. We will show how such organizations stabilize the field of CS by formalizing the representation of a practitioner movement, turning rhetorical generativity and infrastructural adaptability into the participatory development of a policy agenda.
We analyze the organizing practices of CS focusing on the formalization of other practices, like the standardization of methods necessary for the boundary objects examined in the last section to emerge. Our heuristic for this part is the concept of boundary organizations (Guston 1999, 2001) stipulating three characteristics: (1) The creation of organizations formalizes boundaries and makes them durable by internalizing boundary negotiations. (2) They establish distinct lines of accountability toward each of the social worlds involved. (3) They also create new groups of professionals for mediating boundaries. With this perspective, we can understand the formalizing practices of CS organizations as un/doing the boundaries of collective action and representation. They make and enforce rules for what the organization does, how to do things, and who takes part in which terms. This creates contexts that incentivize the use of certain communicative distinctions and interactions in which boundary objects can emerge. To illustrate this we use the case of an agenda-setting process by the German CS network, which was among the first in Europe to do so, and has been influential in the institutionalization of the field. A text also plays a central role in this case study, this time analyzing the formalization practices it results from and it enables.
Formalizing Deliberation as Strategy Development
The White Paper Citizen Science Strategy 2030 for Germany (Bonn et al. 2022) is a 150-page document proposing measures to support the development of CS in the country. As a “White Paper,” a diplomatic document, the strategy is positioned as relevant to research policy and synthesizes the distributed knowledge on CS into a joint action program. It was produced by a working group linked to the German CS network and platform Mitforschen (“Co-Researching”) (2026). 2 The group describes itself as a non-formal consortium of German non-university research institutes “along with university and non-academic partners” (Bonn et al. 2022, 1). It existed for two years, developing the strategy in a series of meetings and public consultations. Contrary to a fully incorporated formal organization with statutes and membership, the working group is a voluntary and temporary boundary organization. It serves as a context for the creation of communicative distinctions and boundary objects, stabilizing them as the agenda of a community of practice.
Creating the strategy, which involved reviewing and updating an earlier one (Bonn et al. 2016), took the form of a peer production process oriented by the joint output. It is described as an “open, participatory process” that “involved 219 people from 136 organizations and institutions using various participatory formats and 14 public dialogue and workshop events” (Bonn et al. 2022, 130). Here, the recommendations to the German federal government are positioned as a result of ample and democratic deliberation among the concerned groups arguing for their legitimacy. At the online kick-off meeting for the White Paper working group, the rationale for the update and a plan for the process are presented. The timeline of 1.5 years includes various workshops, an online survey in German-speaking countries, and an online consultation for feedback from practitioners and other interested parties. The process bears resemblances to the creation of the old agenda, which also involved a series of consultative formats (Bonn et al. 2016, 32). With the overall framing and key events of the exercise as well as a draft matrix for the review already in place, the meeting has the character of a curated opening channeling inputs into a pre-structured workflow. The second meeting installs the hitherto implicit hierarchy among participants with the introduction of a self-appointed “Steering Group” overseeing the White Paper production and suggesting a draft outline as well as nominating topic chairs to lead the writing of strategy chapters (cf. Bonn et al. 2022, 130). The definition of subgroups and allocation of tasks determine which and how contributions can be made. This setting of invited participation (Wynne 2007) also applies, in a yet more restricted manner, to the public presentation of working group results at CS conferences and the online consultation for practitioners and other interested parties. While there is a plenty of deliberation, it happens within a formalized frame.
This establishment of dedicated coordination roles and processes is afforded largely by traditional research organizations, providing staff time to deliver the strategy (Bonn et al. 2022, 130). We thus find the dominant role of academic science also in the organizational dimension. The involvement of non-academic actors, such as CS participants or civil society organizations, is in turn limited by the preordained framing of the process as well as by its practicalities, for example, resource-intensity (Göbel, Ottolini, and Schulze 2021). But also, the formalized boundary organizing enables deliberation among a dispersed group of practitioners on a national scale in a comparatively short period without substantial extra funding. In this context, formal academic organizations also act as sponsors for the national CS community contributing to its stabilization.
Formalizing Belonging as Professional Practitioner Role
Through the strategy process, CS practitioners are construed as a new professional group mediating interaction between social worlds in the boundary organization. They are defined as “[a]ll stakeholders implementing concrete Citizen Science projects, Citizen scientists, Project coordinators” (Bonn et al. 2022, 22) and situated as sources as well as beneficiaries of the strategy. By leading and contributing to the description of the fifteen action areas in the White Paper, practitioners are attributed the role of “experts” and members of the “CS community” (Bonn et al. 2022). This is a community of professionals who reflect their practice in scientific publications as part of a “science of Citizen Science” (Vohland et al. 2021b), but also in a strategy process that uses discussion and indicators for evaluating past aims and delivering “evidence-based” accounts of future ambitions.
The strategy establishes practitioners by formalizing four main representational practices based on how people could contribute: (1) Attributing collective authorship—the first three pages list contributing authors by name and affiliation; (2) illustrating emblematic activities—through pictures featuring people and equipment ostensibly in the course of doing CS; (3) quantifying evidence on the field—by reporting diagrams with survey data for questions related to the fifteen action areas; and (4) portraying individual patrons—heads of research institutions whose testimonial quotes and page-filling pictures are interlaced throughout the document. On the one hand, these forms of representation build credibility for the policy advice outlined in the strategy. They identify a large group of people articulating their demands in a common voice. CS is made visible and associated with a politically desirable image of broad participation (in science), with recommendations stemming from scientific analysis and warranted by established academic organizations.
On the other hand, this formalization performs a stratification of the role of CS practitioners by referring to various groups in distinct ways. While Citizen Scientists count as practitioners, they seem to appear in the strategy only as figures on pictures of CS activities and potentially as survey respondents. Only two of the named authors of the strategy have an independently organized participatory research activity as their affiliation—the vast majority of the others are affiliated with research organizations (followed by a few science communication organizations, civil society organizations, and businesses). 3 Following this interpretation, citizen scientists can be understood as implicated actors in this boundary organizing: “actors silenced or only discursively present—constructed by others for their own purposes” (Clarke 2005, 46). By contrast, authors enjoy the largest presence in the strategy document, by listing their names and affiliations, being included in the survey, and contributing text and images featuring their projects. These project coordinators and stakeholders thus represent the core group of CS practitioners. They can be characterized as individual boundary organizers actively contributing and self-organizing. In addition, we find academic organizations that support CS as collective social actors, expressed here in the form of testimonials (in most cases) by the directors. These organizations also enjoy a high degree of visibility through author affiliations, testimonials, listings at the end of the document, and mentions throughout.
The capacity to act as a CS practitioner and to organize boundaries is primarily an additional professional role for the staff of research organizations. It is, however, an engaged and comparatively informal role. Practitioners enact it by volunteering time for the creation of a common good—an innovative, more societally responsive science and a community around CS in Germany. This shared ambition and engagement manifests the “open participatory” nature of the strategy.
Un/Doing Boundaries of Organizations
We can interpret the boundary organizing analyzed here as a movement within institutions (Schneiberg and Lounsbury 2017, 88-92). Writing the strategy creates an advocacy organization by and for a community of practitioners (doing boundaries). It is described as a “bottom-up network by various organizations” (Bonn et al. 2022, 130) involving mainly members of different research organizations as well as, albeit to a lesser extent, civil society initiatives on a broad range of issues, and individual volunteers (undoing boundaries). They self-organize in the joint interest of claiming external support and position CS as a solution within the existing political and institutional environment. In this way, the rhetorical generativity and infrastructural adaptivity of CS are translated again into the agenda of a reform movement dedicated to, and itself manifesting, a reformalization of science–society relations regarding participatory research.
Managing Boundaries of Science and Society: Connectivity and Fragility
The three case studies examined the institutionalization of a field that constitutes itself under the umbrella term of “Citizen Science,” as it expands and consolidates in Europe. We traced three boundary management practices of establishing CS as a pluralist approach toward science–society relations: (1) Identification as a double promise for innovating high-quality science and addressing societal needs through participation; (2) collaboration through adaptive qualification by online platforms and projects; and (3) organization of practitioners as a movement within institutions. Each mechanism establishes CS as highly generative, reaching across the boundaries of scientific autonomy and societal usefulness, various forms of participatory research as well as bottom-up and top-down mobilization. At the same time, the joint umbrella stipulates an overall framing of participation in research that relies on data-work, formal criteria for projects and curated deliberation among professionals, thus creating new boundaries. Hence, institutionalization—occurring in all these dimensions—does not per se threaten the plurality of citizen science (e.g., Mahr 2023; Van Oudheusden et al. 2024). Rather, it facilitates both new openings and new closures in the relations of science and society.
We can explore this discussion from another angle by examining links between the three types of boundary management. Connecting the case studies, we have observed how communicative generativity (rhetorics) is operationalized as adaptability of platform standards (infrastructuring). In addition, a community of practitioners applies communicative and infrastructuring practices reflexively for the advancement of a reform movement that advocates for plurality albeit in a formalized way (organizing). The rapid growth and recognition of CS can be related, at least partly, to such mutual reinforcements of boundary management practices. The blurry nature of the field can be interpreted as resulting from the many open ends facilitating the connectivity of CS.
However, high connectivity also creates new challenges for boundary practices to irritate each other causing friction, blocks, and even dissolution. An example is the discussion on whether to transform platform quality criteria into a formal definition of CS (Heigl et al. 2019a, 2019b) or refrain from it because this could endanger plurality (Auerbach et al. 2019). We can read this as a tension between rhetorics (defining CS) and infrastructuring (listing projects). While the pro-group warns against overstretching infrastructural adaptability by too loose definitions, the contra-group points out dangers of closing the open door on which the rhetorical generativity of CS rests. Another tension is surfaced by STS critiques that characterize CS as “astroturfing” of the grassroots by government and big business (Mirowski 2018), suffocating emancipation through institutionalization (Mahr 2023). Such accounts sensitize for an imbalance between rhetorics (generativity via promises of democratization) and organizing (formalized and implicating representation). In sum, these tensions between boundary management practices suggest that CS is considerably fragile, the counterpart to its high connectivity.
The negotiation of boundaries in the emerging field of CS reflects broader transformations of science–society relations at the beginning of the 21st century. It highlights ways in which science adapts to increasing pressures for public legitimacy while maintaining professional standards. Through rhetorical practices, CS is discursively positioned as a hybrid entity—one that bridges expectations of scientific rigor and public participation. This narrative of unity downplays internal diversity. It creates an identity that advances data-centric science (Leonelli 2016; Strasser and Edwards 2017) as a common paradigm across disciplines; and responsibilizes individual citizens as key agents of societally useful science (Dickel 2020). Simultaneously, in the material–conceptual practices of infrastructuring, we observe the renegotiation of concrete micro-level boundaries between various participatory research activities. In the advent of platformization (Da Silva Neto and Chiarini 2023), these activities are made commensurable under the CS umbrella, even as heterogeneity is amplified through diverse methods of participatory research. Furthermore, organizing practices re-order meso-level boundaries, as CS emerges as a distinct player with the ability to mobilize resources, represent itself, and negotiate with external actors, such as policymakers. These processes of boundary reconfigurations are not static; they oscillate between opening and closing, doing and undoing, as CS consolidates its position and navigates fragility. We suggest that this balancing between unity and heterogeneity, responsiveness and autonomy remains central to the future of CS and can serve as a starting point for future research on the evolving relations of science and society.
Conclusion
This article analyzed the institutionalization of CS as an emblematic site of broader shifts in the mediation of tensions between maintaining professional standards and legitimizing the role of science in society. For this purpose, we proposed examining symbolic boundaries by exploring the interrelations of the three established STS concepts of boundary work, objects, and organizations.
Empirically, this extended perspective has provided a closer look at how rhetorics, material–conceptual entities and formalization are jointly involved in linking situated practices to overall architectures of public participation. But these (re-)configurations always remain partial, overflowing and in fragile tension, not least due to the different nature and situatedness afforded by each boundary management practice. In the institutionalization processes of CS studied in this article, both new openings and new closings are created in the relations between science and society. Departing from this particular site, one might then explore areas emerging around different yet related aspects, like open science, responsible research, participatory science communication, or populist anti-scientism. Do they also balance “popularization” and reinforcement of epistemic control? What similarities and differences do we find in terms of the socio-epistemologies or temporal dynamics of boundary practices? Which conditions shape them, and what are their wider consequences?
Conceptually, the article elaborates on how canonical STS notions of symbolic boundaries and participation can be extended and made fit(ter) for the analytical questions of today. Our modest proposal has been to get to grips with the respective shortcomings of boundary work, objects, and organizations by bringing these concepts closer together. In this way, one can gain a more fine-grained view of how boundaries between science and society are socially construed, but not arbitrarily so. Doing and undoing them in practice involves mobilizations on multiple plains, which are not linked in a straightforward way and offer different levers for top-down or bottom-up initiatives. Attention to boundary management practices and their shifts, we argue, also gives us leeway for confronting the increasingly ambivalent nature of participation both as an object of inquiry and as a critical analytical tool. For CS, we have investigated how the meaning of “(good) participation” is reconfigured in the context of public engagement, and crucially, how various participatory repertoires are engaged and kept in tension for establishing CS as a field. By making the connections of participation and democratization a question of empirical analysis and normative debate, the analytical gaze can be extended to phenomena like infrastructural or dark participation (Marres et al. 2025; Quandt 2018). Ambivalences can be surfaced and examined more closely—like the power and fragility of traditional scientific institutions, the emptying of deliberative ideals in volunteer engagement, paired with a reinvigoration of these ideals in the mobilization among research professionals, as well as multiple configurations of science publics and publicness. Such an approach can contribute to interrogating how the promises and problems of today's societies, with their profound technoscientific foundations and (partly) democratic traditions, are translated into different architectures of governance, citizen inclusion and machineries for participation (cf. Kelty 2020)—and how that might be otherwise.
A desideratum of our work is the more thorough theoretical conceptualization of what we have exploratively approached as a “field.” CS is not merely a new scientific discipline or simply adds a new method to the scientific canon. Nor can we capture it solely as a movement of citizens who do voluntary research or advance alternative epistemologies. Instead, the institutionalization processes point to a self-reflexive entity-in-the-making, disrupting and rearranging existing boundaries between science and society, different forms of participatory research, and their representations. One promising opportunity in this direction is working out possible connections to the notion of ecologies of participation (Chilvers and Kearnes 2016, 47-56). Ecologies of participation focus on interrelations of diverse forms of public engagement in larger systems, and highlight the importance of linking recent STS discussions on discursive, material-conceptual and formalization aspects. Such an approach can also help to address further limits of our proposal, like ontological multiplicity and the question of how different actors—beyond the ones pushing institutionalization—use ecologies like CS as arenas for various objectives. Through the heuristics of boundary rhetoric, infrastructure, and organizing—along with the reinforcements and tensions between them—this article emphasized the multiplicity of boundary-making and unmaking at work for institutionalizing science–society interfaces (see also Nelson 2025; Radin 2019; Russell and Patterson 2023). More work on such ambivalent boundary renegotiations, and on possible extensions of STS perspectives to address them, is particularly relevant at times when participation and democracy are challenged on epistemic as well as normative grounds in new ways.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the interviewees and research collaborators from the field of Citizen Science for sharing their reflections and letting us participate in and alongside their work. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and ST&HV editors for their insightful feedback, productive engagement, and patience, which greatly helped to shape this manuscript. The article has also benefited from the vivid discussions with colleagues in the DFG research group FOR 2448 “Practicing Evidence—Evidencing Practice” and in the BMBF graduate school “Science Communication and Science Management,” as well as from the valuable support of Tobias Schwarz and Florian Leißler.
Funding
The research for this paper was carried out in the project “The Evidence Culture of Citizen Science. Standardization, evaluation and control of participatory research,” and realized in cooperation between the bidt—Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. It was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), project number 282210851.