Citizen Science in the Age of Digitalization: Participation Models, Technologies, Discourses

The popularity of citizen science has increased in recent years due to the creation of the Internet and subsequent rapid development of digital technologies. This research is devoted to the role of digitalization in the citizen science projects organization and development. Moreover, it analyzes this area in terms of communication between professionals and non-professionals and interaction of members of the volunteer communities. Using such methods as typological analysis of citizen science projects, thematic analysis of volunteer communication, expert interviews let, we selected and studied eight citizen science projects on various digital platforms-from websites to games and mobile applications. The study describes several most common topics in the communication of participants, compares projects in terms of the models of participation that have been already described in the literature and develops the method of the classification of citizen science initiatives by the models of vertical communication, that can be implemented in further research.