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

Abstract

The open data movement is hyped as a sweeping strategy to democratize science, promote diverse data reuse, facilitate reproducibility, accelerate innovation, and much more. However, it is rare that the potential perils of open data are studied and discussed at the same level as these promises. As we invest more into 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 does this by describing the data practices of one contrarian community, anthropogenic climate change (ACC) skeptics, specifically how they process, analyze, preserve, and share data through an investigative digital ethnography. Skeptics often reuse data in ways similar to conventional data reusers, although to unorthodox ends, with differing levels of trust and expertise. ACC skeptics’ data practices call into question the assumption that open data is a universal good. These findings have implications for data repositories and how they might curate data and design their database with this type of reuse in mind.