How the data deluge is changing scientific knowledge production: What role does Citizen Science play?

With the advancing digitalization such as the spread of Web 2.0 technologies, mobile devices or cloud computing, forms of collaboration have emerged in recent years that transcend traditional organizational and professional boundaries. Digital change thus creates new opportunity structures for individual participation in many social fields including participation in academia, which takes place under the dictum of Citizen Science. However, the current interpretation of Citizen Science as a more or less desirable democratization of elitist science seems misleading in view of the largely data-driven participatory research. Instead, this contribution argues from a sociological point of view that Citizen Science should rather be regarded as a transitional phenomenon-an intermediate step on the way from the individual search for truth to the crowdsourcing of routine scientific activities and the automation of knowledge production. Such an interpretation of the social opening of science raises the same question for science as for other areas of society: To what extent can the human element be replaced in academic knowledge production?