The Internet, in Brian Trench’s (2008) words, “is turning science communication
inside-out” and, as a result, the boundaries between internal and external science
communication are “eroding.” Yet these boundaries have long been complicated by
“para-scientific genres” such as trade magazines, as Sarah Kaplan and Joanna Radin
(2011) show, when they detail genres that exist “alongside” mainstream scientific
genres. These genres’ existence is dependent upon their association with established
scientific media and genres, such as the scholarly journal and the scientific research
article. Moreover, these genres reach a wider audience, including policymakers and
others involved in the community, with a mission of influencing the direction of a
discipline or field. Bringing together these ideas, Carolyn R. Miller and I (forthcoming)
extend the notion of parascientific genres to account for emerging genres of science
communication online, suggesting that the rhetorical work parascientific genres do has
been partially moved into more public (or, external) spheres of scientific discourse.
This dissertation focuses on the erosion of boundaries between internal and external
science communication to explore the possibilities for parascientific genres—and looks
specifically to citizen science as a site of inquiry. While some attention has been paid to
citizen science, it is often devoted to scientist-driven cases, where discursive acts are
governed by rhetorics of professionalized science. Participant-driven citizen science
can depart from these conventions, I maintain. And interesting examples of
parascientific genres, or genres that demonstrate characteristics of both internal and
external science communication, are available for examination.