The future of citizen science: emerging technologies and shifting paradigms

www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America A the above vignette illustrates, the future of citizen science will likely be inextricably linked to emerging technologies. By spanning multiple spatial, temporal, and social scales, and by being designed to achieve a number of different outcomes, citizen-science projects will need to adopt new technologies to allow participants and organizers to communicate and interact effectively (Bonney et al. 2009a; Newman et al. 2011; Dickinson et al. 2012; MillerRushing et al. 2012; Shirk et al. 2012). As citizen science becomes more formalized and more widely accepted among scientific, educational, and community-oriented domains, additional factors – such as sociopolitical scenarios, economic conditions, and ethical considerations – will also influence how the field develops over time. Here, we discuss the future of citizen science (ie the process it uses to conduct scientific research, the culture of its future participants and programs, and the growing citizen-science community) using representative technologies and examples from the vignette above.