Citizen Science and Democracy: Participatory Water Monitoring in the Marcellus Shale Fracking Boom

Abstract

Projections—the way that people collectively talk about the future—shape action in the present. This sociological observation has implications for citizen science initiatives that aim to confront powerful industries and produce social change. When people participate in citizen science associations—such as watershed monitoring organizations, the subject of this study—their actions and democratic sensibilities are affected by the ways that organizers and other volunteers project the future uses of the environmental data they are collecting. In this case, hundreds of people are participating in volunteer watershed monitoring groups in response to the “fracking” boom in the northeastern United States. Most of these efforts emphasize the collection of “baseline” data, which they view as essential to future efforts to hold polluters accountable. However, these projects tend to channel public concern about fracking toward future scientific controversies, instead of political action now to prevent pollution. Furthermore, baseline watershed monitoring efforts reinforce the epistemology of regulatory agencies, rather than generating alternative forms of knowledge about watershed health. Organizers actively work to convince volunteers that their work has meaning and that they are being empowered, but future-oriented data collection is often at odds with volunteers’ current-day motivations. Scholars and activists have often heralded citizen science as a way to radically democratize environmental governance; however, to achieve this, citizen science must project futures that stimulate transformative actions in the present.