Curating for Contrarian Communities: Data Practices of Anthropogenic Climate Change Skeptics

Abstract

The open data movement is often touted as a sweeping strategy to democratize science, promote diverse data reuse, facilitate reproducibility, accelerate innovation, and much more. However, the potential perils of open data are seldom examined and discussed in equal measure to these promises. As we continue to invest in open data, we need to study the full spectrum of what open data facilitates in practice, which can then inform future policy and design decisions. This paper aims to address this gap by presenting an investigative digital ethnography of one contrarian community, anthropogenic climate change (ACC) skeptics, to describe how they process, analyze, preserve, and share data. Skeptics often engage in data reuse similar to conventional data reusers, albeit for unconventional purposes and with varying degrees of trust and expertise. The data practices of ACC skeptics challenge the assumption that open data is universally beneficial. These findings carry implications for data repositories and how they might curate data and design databases with this type of reuse in mind.