iNaturalist: Understanding Biodiversity Through a Digital Medium

Abstract

Much of the current excitement about citizen science is due to the innovative use of internet-based media platforms. These are designed to enable data production while seeking to be instructive or even entertaining for its users. The present thesis demonstrates how these two distinct uses can be in a tension, and how users seek to resolve it. It draws on an ethnography of uses of iNaturalist, a digital platform promoted to document biodiversity by BioBlitz Canada, at the Ontario BioBlitz at Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto, and the rare Community BioBlitz in Cambridge. Through interactions with the diverse members of these events, I have found that the opinions surrounding new media and citizen science vary significantly and that users adopt specific techniques to circumvent the challenges they experience with a given medium.