STARS IN THEIR EYES?

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This document is the English version of:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Élise Tancoigne, Jérôme Baudry« La tête dans les étoiles ? », Réseaux 2019/2 (No214-215), p. 109-140.
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Available online at :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_RES_214_0109--stars-in-their-eyes.htm-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How to cite this article :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Élise Tancoigne, Jérôme Baudry« La tête dans les étoiles ? », Réseaux 2019/2 (No214-215), p. 109-140.
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Making sense of involvement in the citizen science project SETI@home
Élise Tancoigne, Jérôme BaudryMaking sense of involvement in the citizen
science project SETI@home 1
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Élise TANCOIGNE
Jérôme BAUDRYTranslated from French by Cadenza Academic Translations

1. This study was funded by the project ERC/SNSF BSCGIO_158887, The Rise of Citizen
Science: Rethinking Public Participation in Science (2015–2020), led by Bruno J. Strasser(University of Geneva).

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STARS IN THEIR EYES?

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The reality is that the kind of “crowdsourced” science projects featured in thecase study in this paper—top-down, with public participation limited to carrying out certain predefined micro-tasks within a framework determined by
the researchers—may not be reconfiguring science as a professional activity
so much as the role of the amateur scientist and the meaning that he or she
attaches to that role. We might therefore wonder about the degree of continuity or discontinuity between traditional forms of participation in scienceand the digital experience offered by citizen science. What happens to amateur science when it goes online? Amateur science often takes the form of along-term engagement that we might call “serious leisure” (Stebbins, 1992)
or even, at its most intense, “devotee work,” where the boundary between
work and leisure becomes blurred. Astronomy (Stebbins, 1982), with its
long tradition of amateur involvement, is a perfect example, as participants
themselves have developed a hierarchy that not only distinguishes between“amateur astronomers” and “astronomy amateurs,” but also pits “observers”
against “armchair astronomers,” regarded as occupying a more lowly position

Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Université de Genève - - 129.194.139.57 - 14/01/2020 12h29. © La DécouverteWhether they are counting birds (eBird), classifying photographsof galaxies (Galaxy Zoo), solving 3D puzzles (Foldit), or enriching medical databases (PatientsLikeMe), more and more people
are getting involved in research projects in spheres as diverse as climatology, astronomy, medicine, and even history. While popular engagement inscientific production is nothing new, today’s “citizen science” is steeped in a
discourse that makes some particularly far-reaching promises (Strasser et al.,2019). Not content with “democratizing” science and reducing, if not eliminating, the gap between citizen and expert, amateur and professional, citizen
science is also presented as a new way of producing scientific knowledge:
more horizontal and decentralized, and therefore leading to more new ideas(Nielsen, 2011; Lievrouw, 2010). By creating the conditions for a completely
new division of scientific labor, new information technologies play a central
role in this discourse (Flichy, 2010). Ultimately, science may be just one more
profession to be destabilized and then reconfigured by the internet, like journalism (Aubert, 2009), web development (Aguiton and Cardon, 2008), andeven cartography (Haklay and Weber, 2008).

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But how do participants in online citizen science projects, in contrast, makesense of their involvement, in relation to both themselves and their peers?
Is this involvement understood as a form of amateur science, or is it a category apart, with its own internal logics? Here, we approach these questions
through a case study of a unique project, SETI@home (SETI being an acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), that stands out due to bothits remarkable success and its compelling origin story that, through repeatedretellings, has become part of the founding narrative of today’s citizen science(Scoles, 2017). Launched in 1999 at the University of Berkeley in California,
SETI@home harnesses a global distributed computing network that allows
participants to analyze signals from space captured by the Arecibo telescope,in the hope of picking up traces of an alien civilization. The project, funded
by Paramount as part of its publicity campaign for the film Star Trek, attracted
more than 1.5 million participants in its first few months, far beyond the
100,000 anticipated by its creators (Benjamin, 2004). SETI@home is stillgoing strong and since 2004 has been part of the BOINC platform (Berkeley
Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), which brings together various
distributed computing projects in fields including molecular biology, environmental science, and even particle physics, as well as astronomy and thesearch for alien life. Today, it takes the form of a lightweight application thatparticipants install on their own computers after registering on the project
website (an image of the user interface is shown in figure 1A). The site also
provides information on the status of the project, the science behind it, and, inparticular, its “community” of citizen scientists.
Since the project was launched in 1999, participation in SETI@home has
been framed as a collective activity that has given rise to a “virtual community” (Rheinold 1993): an amateur public enlisted with a view to popularizing a specific scientific vision and to fueling an enthusiasm comparable tothe intense public interest once galvanized by space exploration (Benjamin,
2004; McCray, 2008). Membership of this virtual community is therefore not
only a matter of donating spare computing power, but also involves earning

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in the scientific pecking order (Williams, 2000). The act of observing (producing data, as opposed to passively consuming astronomical knowledge) is
as crucial as the collective nature of the activity (compared to the solitarinessof reading) in defining the amateur astronomer, a definition that implicates theparticipant in a system of moral and social regulation exercised by the community of peers (Howe, 2009).

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Stars in their eyes?   V

Figure 1.

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Source: screenshot taken by the authors.

points, perhaps joining a team, posting in forums, contributing to individualand collective performance rankings, translating the site into various languages, showing individual status with badges, and creating a public profile.
All of these activities further the construction of a particular participant identity (Georges, 2009) that is inextricably declarative (through the production ofa text, photograph, or alias), performative (through active engagement withthe platform), and quantified (through the set of metrics that measure thisengagement). Furthermore, these activities all leave multiple textual traces
that offer a particularly rich source of empirical data, notably because thisDocument downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Université de Genève - - 129.194.139.57 - 14/01/2020 12h29. © La Découverte

A - User interface for SETI@home in BOINC.
B - Example profile: participant no. 206

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data has not been constructed through direct interaction with the researcher,as with traditional methods such as interviews, participant observation, andsociological questionnaires (Holohan, 2013; Curtis, 2018). These traces andthe methods used to study them also differ from attempts to codify the motivations of participants in online citizen science projects, predominantly issuing from the fields of psychology or Human–Computer Interaction (HCI)(Jennet et al., 2014; Nov et al., 2014). Such studies intentionally reduce thedynamics of participation to the exercise of a form of disembodied individual
rationality (regardless of whether the declared motivation is love of science,the sense of belonging to a community, or even the pleasure of an intellectual
challenge). In contrast, we seek to situate these dynamics in relation to, first,
the individual identities and forms of self-presentation that participants construct through their involvement and, second, the specific practices or modesof participation in which they are invited to engage.
To explore how SETI@home participants forge their identities as participants, how they construct and showcase their individuality, and how they
make sense of their involvement in a scientific project, we draw on a corpus of tens of thousands of profiles voluntarily completed over the years andlinked to a series of activity metrics that serve as a public scoring system. We
analyze this corpus using a distant reading tool (Moretti, 2013), namely the
IRaMuTeQ program (Ratinaud and Déjean, 2009). This allows us to pursue
a dual line of inquiry, looking at both the biographical information throughwhich participants make sense of their involvement in an online science project and what makes it possible for them to form a meaningful community
with other users of the platform. Our findings are presented in two stages.
First, we offer a more detailed description of the source data and our chosen
methodology, which allows us to identify five different modes of connecting self-presentation and involvement in an online science project. Second,
we adopt a more qualitative approach to gain an in-depth understanding of
two particular modes of constructing a participant identity, selected because
they allow us both to extricate and question the delineation of the relationshipbetween amateur science and online citizen science. The first mode embodies
a fascination with the object of scientific inquiry itself (space), comparable tothat of traditional amateur astronomers, while the second is concerned with atechnological affinity for the very medium of the project (distributed computing), an affinity characteristic of the world of “makers,” “overclockers,” andother hardware enthusiasts.

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Stars in their eyes?   VII

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In terms of its online presence, the SETI@home project is an intricate network; it spills over from the project’s own website and the public profiles andforums that it hosts to an immense maze of websites. Some of these were created by the many competing teams, some by participants of a statistical bentinterested in comparing, classifying, and showcasing the work of the mostcommitted individuals or the highest performing teams. The result is a latticeof potential spaces in which participants can display and construct their identities. Yet, despite the number and diversity of these spaces, not all the connections between self-presentation and participant involvement are observed
here. The discursive field of possibilities is primarily shaped by the highly
specific demography of project participants, 90 percent of whom are welleducated males (see box: Who posts an online profile?) and who are much
more likely to be employed in the IT field compared to the general population (Curtis, 2018). However, their options for showcasing their identities
are largely centered around the participation metrics set by the project itself,
which highlight certain forms of engagement to a greater extent than others.
These metrics intricately blend accumulation, competition, and collaboration,
and we need to start from here if we are to understand what it means to takepart in an online citizen science project.
Collaboration, accumulation, and competition
Like many other collaborative platforms and online games, SETI@home isbuilt on the logics of accumulation (Martin and Dagiral, 2016) and peer-topeer competition. The platform rates each participant in various ways, somequantitative (for example his or her point score) and some ostensibly morequalitative (such as badges, which do not so much reward a given quantity ofwork as reflect the participant’s rank in relation to others, indicating that heor she is in the top 1, 5, or 10 percent). Like motor racing, this is not just acompetition between humans, but between human/non-human assemblages:
human–machine dyads. The SETI@home culture differs to that of other citizen science contexts (such as mass science portals like Zooniverse or sciencebased games like Foldit or EyeWire) that tend to focus more on rewarding
individual performance than on rankings, even if the latter are still considered important. Points are allocated through a calculation that distinguishes

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IDENTITY AND INVOLVEMENT IN AN ONLINE CITIZEN SCIENCE
PROJECTbetween “total credit” and credit earned over the last thirty days (“average
recent credit”). This formulation makes for dynamic rankings that allow thecompetition to unfold in real time, without unduly favoring long-term participants with higher accumulated capital. This competition quickly pushed
participants into forming teams based on nationality (e.g. SETI.USA, SETI.
Germany), institution (e.g. UC Berkeley, Boeing), or more personal characteristics (e.g. Raccoon Lovers).

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As we will see, the process of constructing an identity as a participant in acitizen science project, and making that participation meaningful both foroneself and for others is not just about rehearsing normative visions of science—that is, engaging in a scientific endeavor as a commitment to the public
good. It involves subscribing to a specific logic of participation as competition, a logic that comes with an entire system of representation that at times
runs counter to the way science and research are understood by amateur scientists. To guide us in our inquiry into how participants themselves conceive
their involvement, we took their written online profiles as our main unit ofanalysis (see box: Who posts an online profile? and figure 1B), together withthe metrics published on the SETI@home website. These include data suchas total number of points, team (if applicable), and the number of messages
posted in discussion forums. Such profiles are visible to a large audience (allvisitors to the website, in this case), in accordance with the “beacon” model in
Dominique Cardon’s (2008) typology.

Who posts an online profile?
In the period between the launch of the project in 1999 and 2016, SETI@home
attracted a total of 4,754,118 participants. 2 The application was available as astand-alone version called SETI@home Classic until 2004, when it migrated to a
multi-project platform developed by its creators, BOINC. Two thirds of participants took part only through this earlier version of the program, while a quarter
signed up directly on the BOINC platform. The remainder (8 percent) made thetransition from SETI@home Classic to SETI@home on BOINC. Of the total
number of participants, 99,343 (2 percent) have completed a personal profile
2. In order to qualify as a participant of SETI@home, an individual must have completed atleast one computational task. We were given access to metrics for participants who registeredunder SETI@home Classic after contacting one of the project’s founders. Data from BOINC isavailable to download on a daily basis. The two data sets were assembled in 2016.

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Participants who complete a profile are typically more heavily invested in thecomputational tasks (with a median of 660 points compared to 355) and more
likely to be part of a team (61 percent versus 25 percent). They also tend to havebeen involved with the project for a longer period of time (a median of six years
compared to one year for those who choose to remain anonymous).
The kind of information prized by sociologists or demographers (age, gender,
profession, etc.) is scant. After assigning gender categories through automatedcoding based on a database of first names, and age categories based on regularexpressions, we estimate this group to be 90 percent male, with a median age of
32 (around half of all profiles disclose the participant’s gender and a third givehis or her age).

We developed what we would describe as an exploratory approach to textual
analysis, offering a framework that would resist preconceived ideas and allow
us to develop our own interpretations of participants’ words. Known as the
ALCESTE method, this approach produces a diagram from the text that identifies common classes of words or “lexical worlds” (Reinert, 1983). It involves
applying a particular form of statistical analysis to text segments crosstabulated with words taken from a dictionary. By applying this method to our
corpus (see box: Distant reading: Overview of a methodological path), wewere able to identify a number of different lexical worlds within SETI@home
associated with how participants present themselves and account for theirchoice to take part in the project.

3. The only condition for completing a personal profile stipulated by the site is that the participant must have carried out at least one computational task in the preceding thirty days (in otherwords, he or she must have an “average recent credit” of at least 1). The same condition applies
to those wishing to post in forums. This means that participants must have shown a degree ofcommitment to the work of the project before they can gain access to the site’s social features.

Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Université de Genève - - 129.194.139.57 - 14/01/2020 12h29. © La Découverte(figure 1B). Each profile comes pre-divided into two sections: “background”
and “thoughts about the project.” 3 In the “background” section, new recruits areinvited to share where they come from, their age, what they do for a living, what
their hobbies are, and any other information they choose. In the “thoughts” section, they are encouraged to give their reasons for running SETI@home and theirgeneral observations on the project.

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We downloaded the available profiles of those who have taken part in the projectsince its move to BOINC (n=65,954), retaining only those written in English(n=39,699). As a general rule, these profiles are concise, with a median of 38 words(about three sentences); the limit initially set by the site was 2,000 words. The
majority of profiles retained (61 percent) belong to participants who first signed
up through the Classic program and have followed the project to its new home on
BOINC. As IRaMuTeQ’s text detection method is dictionary-based, we seeded
this dictionary with specialized terms (such as “radio amateur”). These terms
were identified beforehand by running a term extraction script on the full text ofthe profiles using the Cortext Manager program. 4 We also normalized the activity
metrics (total number of points, number of forum posts) according to each participant’s period of activity (in months).
The first stage of analysis was focused on the “background” section, where participants identify themselves (figure 1B). Taking the entire profile as our unit ofanalysis, without splitting it into segments, we identified six main lexical classes
that account for 87 percent of the corpus (see figure 2 for the final dendrogramand appendix A for further information on parameters). IRaMuTeQ automaticallylabels each class based on a set of additional variables—the individual activity metrics, in this case. The median age of participants in each class was also calculated. It
is important to note that seventeen years elapsed between the launch of the project
and the date on which we obtained our data. It is possible that some participants
have matured with the project and amended their profiles accordingly, whereas others may have never updated their information. It is therefore difficult to accountfor how dynamics of engagement (or disengagement) with the project may havechanged over time, or to demonstrate generational effects (Donnat and Lévy, 2007).
The second stage was to conduct a new analysis for each class, this time based on
text segments from the “thoughts about the project” section, where participants
are invited to explain their reasons or motivations for taking part (figure 1B).
This section was simplified as part of the transition to BOINC; in the Classic
version, participants were asked for their opinions about the existence of extraterrestrial life forms and how we might communicate with them 5 as well as theirreasons for joining the project. Each of these additional classifications accounted
for around 90 percent of its corpus (see appendixes B and C for the parameters of
the classification and the dendrograms for two of the profile classes identified).
4. Script “Terms extraction,” see https://docs.cortext.net/lexical-extraction/. Accessed March 19,
2019.
5. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu:80/user_profile/index.html. Accessed October 8, 2018 on
http://web.archive.org/web/.

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Distant reading: Overview of a methodological pathStars in their eyes?   XIFigure 2. Classes identified by IRaMuTeQ

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Source: IRaMuTeQ; analysis conducted by the authors.

Following the ALCESTE method, we identified five profile types (figure 2), 6
which we will call family man, European student, retired technician, hardware
6. We have ignored a slightly different class that we might call anonymous mavericks (class 4,
figure 2). These participants fill in profiles, but do so tongue in cheek. Rather than following
the guidelines provided by the site, they use the space to display their wit or pose questions thatmock the reader’s curiosity. Invariably, these texts tell us nothing about their authors’ interests

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For our basic unit of analysis, we took the full profile rather than dividing it
into segments. Further information on the parameters used can be found inappendix A. The words listed under each class are those most specific to thatclass, based on chi-squared values.

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Each of these profile types corresponds to a particular form of selfpresentation and a particular pattern of activity, which shed light on both how
people engage with the project and how they make sense of this engagement.
Two in particular—space buffs and hardware hackers—strike us as crucial forunderstanding the continuities and discontinuities between amateur scienceand online citizen science. Before looking at these two profile types in greater
depth, we will briefly present each type derived through the ALCESTE
method.
Word of mouth, aesthetics, and curiosity
Those in the family man category present themselves primarily through theirprivate lives: their family and their hobbies (figure 2, class 2).
Im 31 years old. I live in the middel of Norway near to Trondheim. I have awife and two fantastic kids. I love to be outdoors hunting, fishing, kayaking,skiing or just watching stars [...]. ‒ Profile no. 31364 7

These participants mention their wives, children, and grandchildren, often
attaching a positive evaluation to their family circumstances: “happily married,” “wonderful wife.” The adjectives associated with this class are generally
positive: “beautiful,” “lovely,” “sunny,” “pleasant.” Among the leisure activities mentioned, outdoor sports feature strongly: “fish,” “camp,” “hike,” “golf,”
in direct contrast to the kind of indoor activity involved in SETI@home. For
this group, compiling a personal profile is a chance to showcase a successful
or biography: “that’s me,” “I am me, you are not,” “E.T., where are you?” “If you know methen fine, you know enough.” The words “you” and “me” are the most characteristic of thisclass. Here, a dialectic is established between author and reader, locking them into a game of
mirrors that allows the author to evade the disclosure demanded by the site.
7. Profile numbers at the end of this and subsequent quotations have been assigned by theauthors of this article. Any emphasis of particular words or phrases is also theirs.

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hacker, and space buff. The median ages of those in the family man and retired
technician groups (38 and 39 years, respectively) are distinctly higher thanthose of the European students (28) or hardware hackers (29). Space buffs
fall between the two, with a median age of 34. As we will see, the relatively
low median age for retired technicians can be explained by another feature
specific to this profile type.

Stars in their eyes?   XIII

private life that helps them distance themselves from the “techie” image wemight expect to find among participants in a distributed computing project.
These participants tend to be lone wolves; while reasonably invested in termsof computational activity, they mostly work alone and not as part of a team.
Their profiles conform to the guidelines provided by the site, and so they arealso likely to respond to questions about extraterrestrial life; yes, they believethat aliens exist (“exist,” “believe,” “think”), but they are more circumspect
about the possibility of communicating with them (the word “if” is strongly
associated with this profile type).
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A number of these family men signed up to SETI@home because they weredrawn to the screensaver it offered and the idea of putting unused resources
to good use. In the first few years of the project, SETI@home held particularappeal on account of the screensaver it made available to participants, at a time
when these were not so easy to come by. The program runs while the computer is not otherwise in use, tracking its output in a dynamic graph, colorfuland vividly designed. Here, two other logics of engagement come into play:
one aesthetic and one utilitarian (the desire not to waste available resources).
Other participants indicated that they were introduced to SETI@home byfriends (often for the purpose of building up a team). Recruitment by cooption is typical of voluntary projects in general (Simonet, 2010). Here, it
has less to do with enjoyment and more with giving (time, material resources,etc.). These profiles are a good match for the kind of participant envisaged by
the project’s creators. When asked what they think of SETI@home, they overwhelmingly respond that it is “important” and it allows them to “contribute,”“participate,” or “help” “science.” Such rationales are found in other classes
as well; in fact, all of the profiles studied invoke the social norm of the common good, typically found in accounts of volunteer activity (Simonet, 2010).
This comes through strongly in another of our five profile types, the European
students, who also describe themselves in terms of civil identity but doso through the use of markers of geography (“Germany,” “Poland,” “theNetherlands,” “France,” etc.) and status, namely their status as students (“student,” study,” etc.) (figure 2, class 1).
I come from Czech Republic, country often called Heart of Europe. I’m
22 student of computer science and boinc.cz team member. My hobbies arecomputers, music, sport shooting and good movies (esp. Czech and French).
I like to search for alternatives, don’t like to hear that only one way is right :-)‒ Profile no. 19139

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European students state their first names and define themselves primarily by theircountry of origin and their student status. This form of self-presentation links
back to both the competition between teams identified with particular countries
and SETI@home’s US roots. By declaring their (European) nationality, theseparticipants signal their otherness on a platform developed in the United States.
Cultural pastimes (Donnat and Lévy, 2007) typically favored by adolescents andyoung adults (reading, making music, watching movies, gaming, etc.) are also
very well represented in this class. As with the previous profile type, these participants often mention a friend or colleague who introduced them to SETI@home,
and they tend to make a more modest contribution than other groups.
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Technology as a vocation and as a medium
A third type, the retired technicians (figure 2, class 3), brings together those profiles that mention both retirement and a career in a technical field (technician,engineer, pilot, etc.). These participants frequently refer to the US armed forces:
Born in Brooklyn, NY a few years ago (1938) and now live in a very small town
in Arkansas. Aircraft mechanic and flight crew in the US Navy and retired
as an ADC [. . .]. Hobbies are Competitive pistol shooting, woodworking, wine
making, helping folks and trying to learn computers by running a small farmof them in the BOINC system. Started with SETI in Aug.99. ‒ Profile no. 23199

These references to the military undoubtedly explain the relatively low medianage of this profile type, given that members of the armed forces can retire after
fifteen or twenty years of service. In this type we also find a sizeable group ofradio amateurs (“ham radio”) in addition to various other skilled hobbyists,such as model makers and woodworkers. Writing about their involvement in
the project, these participants stress their status as long-term contributors andthe enjoyment that it brings them. Along with the hardware hackers, they tend
to have been particularly early adopters. They earn the most points per monthand are the most active in discussions about the potential benefits and risksof an alien encounter. Retired technicians’ professional careers help them toposition themselves and gain recognition (Casilli, 2012).
As for the hardware hackers (figure 2, class 6), their profiles are focused on
their machines and the computational tasks themselves: “run,” “pentium,”“amd,” and, indeed, “crunch,” used as shorthand for the data processing work,
are the terms most strongly associated with this class.

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These participants may refer to themselves and each other as “crunchers.”
What makes their involvement meaningful to them is the chance to show their
computer equipment and the amount of data they can process. Their relationships with other participants are built on a common passion for computers
and IT hardware. They contribute twice as much as the others in terms ofcomputational tasks and are more likely to be part of a team. The appeal of
the project for these participants has little to do with curiosity or aesthetic
appreciation for its screensaver. On the contrary, a number of them indicatethat their main motivations are enjoyment and competition:
I started running SETI@HOME to compete with two friends in work unit
crunching. They put up a good fight, but realistically could not beat me. Seti isa fun project, and I am glad that they have gone BOINC as it brings new possibilities to the program. Still, they will never capture the character of the originalSeti, or the fun of competing for time, speed, and numbers. Profile no. 2439

Their enthusiasm for the project may, therefore, be an extension of their
enthusiasm for what we might call the SETI@home apparatus—not only inthe classical sense of technical apparatus, that of machinery, but in the broader
sense of the global, competitive networked apparatus that it embodies.
Passion for space: Another logic of engagement
It is in the final profile type, the space buffs (figure 2, class 5), that we findthose participants whose interests most directly align with the objective of
SETI@home: astronomical knowledge. Observations about the search for
intelligent life feature prominently in these profiles, and their authors display
a keen and sometimes fanciful interest in space and the cosmos:
Hi, my name is Chris and I come from Hannover/Germany. I’m very interested in anything about space. For example extraterrestrial life, black
holes, how begans a star and everything else physical and biological about
space [. . .]. ‒ Profile no. 33038

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Currently in school taking a Java Enterprise Developer program. I currently
run Seti@Home at school 24/7 on an Intel 1GHz/512MB RAM system and athome on an Athlon 1.0GHz/512MB RAM desktop and a 900MHz/512MB
RAM laptop. What else can I say? ‒ Profile no. 8841

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Space is envisaged less as an object of scientific inquiry than the stuff of
fantasy and dreams; it is the participant’s own subjective construct that is at
the heart of this discourse, rather than space itself. Here, participants often
position themselves as the grammatical subject of verbs such as “believe,”“hope,” “find,” or “think.” Participants in this profile type tend to have fewer
points than the others and are seldom affiliated with a team. They are lessheavily invested in the computational tasks than the hardware hackers. In
the “thoughts about the project” section, their reflections are often linked tothemes of extraterrestrial life, although they also emphasize the idea of making a contribution: “help,” “work,” “part,” “participate.” This contribution
matters to them, at least in discursive terms. In practice, they perform fewer
tasks (and are almost certainly working with more modest hardware) than the
hardware hackers.
From choosing a pseudonym to writing their profile (sometimes accompanied
by a photograph), participants forge strategies to distinguish themselves firstas individuals, then as groups (through teams). These strategies, in turn, arewhat mark out the various categories into which they fall (Béliard, 2009).
They appear to reveal a more complex map of participation in an online citizen science project than we might expect if we were to assume such projects
to be mere digital extensions of offline amateur astronomy. Still, it would
seem reductive to regard their success as evidence of a new wave of public
enthusiasm for science, contrary to the initial hopes of SETI@home’s creators. Yes, there are plenty of new recruits to be found, but the majority ofprofiles—spaces where participants construct a public identity and accountfor their involvement—tell a story of co-option by word of mouth and curiosity about the medium itself (i.e., the aesthetic appeal of the screensaver) rather
than an interest in science and astronomy. Even the substantial group of space
buffs seem to be wedded to a fantastical vision of space that has little in common with the “serious leisure” interest of amateur astronomers. Moreover,their contribution fades into insignificance compared to that of another amateur group, the hardware hackers, who shoulder the bulk of the computational
work carried out through the platform. Just like earlier communication systems (Beuscart, 2002), SETI@home attracts those who declare a passion for
the apparatus itself, regardless of purpose: devotees of machines and competition between machines. While we do not mean to reify the analytical classes
identified through the ALCESTE method, they do appear to be useful devices
for further investigation, allowing us to gain a clearer understanding of theobject of inquiry. The next section explores two of these classes in greater

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To what extent do participants in SETI@home invoke an interest in space
and astronomy in making sense of their involvement, and in what ways isthis interest expressed? What is the relationship between the pursuit of amateur astronomy and engagement with a distributed computing project aimed
at producing astronomical knowledge? Do the two form part of a continuumof practices within the same field of “serious leisure” (Stebbins, 1992)?
Stebbins explores the boundaries between leisure and work and the interlinkages between the public, amateurs, and professionals. He posits a continuumof activity running between two extremes: “dabblers” and “professionals,”with “hobbyists,” “apprentices,” “journeymen,” and “masters” in between(Stebbins, 1982). In the specific context of astronomy, this continuum canbe coupled with an epistemic distinction adopted by amateur astronomers
themselves, between “armchair astronomers,” who indulge their passion
mainly through reading and attending lectures, and “observers,” who roll up
their sleeves and set out to gather their own empirical data (Williams, 2000).
SETI@home’s space buffs both reflect and challenge these divisions, leading us to question the rigidity of Stebbins’ classifications when we attempt
to apply them to online citizen science. It seems clear that these participants
are distinguished less by their degree of commitment, understood in terms ofsteps on a career ladder, than by their relative affiliation with different epistemic practices.
Never far from my telescope
Hi! I am a 52 year young computer consultant from NJ. Ever since i was very
young, i have walked around at night looking at the stars. I have tripped too
many times to count doing this. I have always been interested in Science andespecially astronomy and ran a local Astronomy club for 4 years. One of thegreatest thrills I have ever had with my telescope was the first time. I spotted
comet Haley in early December 1985. ‒ Profile no. 3123

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depth, representing two figures that seem to play a crucial role in the project: the space buff and the hardware hacker. In order to do so, we adopt a
more qualitative approach that draws on empirical data derived from a purposive reading of participant profiles and discussion forums hosted on the main
SETI@home website.

Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Université de Genève - - 129.194.139.57 - 14/01/2020 12h29. © La DécouverteThis participant has chosen to construct his SETI@home identity around thecentral motif of the telescope, a personal tool for observation that he is happy
to transport in order to watch interesting astronomical phenomena unfold
under the best possible conditions. His involvement takes on a collective andeducational dimension through the astronomy club he has founded. However,
the thing that marks him out as an amateur astronomer is his strong attachment
to specific experiences of observation, whereas professional astronomers tend
to see their observational findings as part of a normalized data series (Stebbins,1982). References to telescopes and their use appear infrequently in the profiles studied but are systematically associated with the pleasure of observation.
Very rarely, we find profiles that mention building telescopes—all belonging to men whose professional lives involve assembling optical or electronic
instruments and who thus use the same skills in their hobby that they haveacquired over the course of their career. It is striking that very few of the leading contributors to the project conform to this profile of an amateur astronomer
who makes his or her own observations; there appears to be no correlation
between the amount of effort put into SETI@home’s computational tasks andthat expended in other aspects of astronomy. There is virtually no real overlap between the practices of amateur astronomers and the kind of astronomybased citizen science offered by SETI@home. The distributed computing thatdrives the project represents an astronomical epistemic practice with no connection to the core activities of the amateur astronomer, most notably withrespect to observation. Moreover, among those profiles that do mention observational activity, there is no clear link with the field of professional astronomy(conferences, journals, etc.) of the kind we would need to see in order to classify their activities as “serious leisure,” following Stebbins (1992), rather thanmere “dabbling.” In fact, within SETI@home, the identities of space buffs andtheir engagement with the project are played out on a rather different stage.
Geek culture: Sci-fi, Carl Sagan, and Star Trek
Hello Earth! [. . .] When I was a little boy I always tried to watch the Carl
Sagan’s TV-Series “Cosmos” as it was broadcasted quite late in the evening.
The pictures and the used upcoming synthesizer music for its soundtrack
infected my 9 year old mind with the wish to explore the universe [. . .].
Since then I’ve viewn Carl Sagan’s work as selfless, progressive and good forall mankind. [. . .] ‒ Profile no. 14663

Participants often trace their fascination with space back to a specific individual,
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Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Université de Genève - - 129.194.139.57 - 14/01/2020 12h29. © La Découverteinterest in the cosmos through stargazing sessions or books. There is one name,however, that crops up again and again in these gatekeeper narratives: that of
the American astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan, who died at the end of 1996, twoand-a-half years before SETI@home was launched, is most widely known as
the creator of a popular science series that aired in 1980, Cosmos: A Personal
Voyage, and the author of a science fiction novel called Contact, published in1985 and adapted for cinema a year after his death. This movie plays a crucial role in the system of representation displayed by many SETI@home participants, not only because its release happened to coincide roughly with thelaunch of the project but also because of its plot. It tells the story of an encounter between an alien civilization and a young female scientist listening out for
signals from the Arecibo telescope, amid tight governmental and military scrutiny. More generally, Carl Sagan was instrumental in educating the public about
astronomy, as well as the question of alien life, at a time when SETI research
programs were funded by the US government (Garber, 1999). If we examine thelexical class associated with space buffs, it is clear that these participants havea particular affinity with a brand of popular culture that has grown up aroundscience fiction literature and films (Onnion, 2016), and with a characteristicallyAmerican zeal for science and technology (Hughes, 1989), both of which are
invoked when they elucidate their interest in the SETI@home project.
The film Contact and the Cosmos series are not the only points of cultural
encounter mentioned by project participants; the futuristic world of Star
Trek, a foundational part of geek culture that helped bring it into the mainstream (Peyron, 2014) is a theme common to many profiles. From the very
beginning, Star Trek won a broad fan base who have actively contributed tothe series’ longevity (Jindra, 1994). Just like the “Carl Sagan generation,”(Davidson, 2000) these “fandoms” helped foster support for SETI@home in a
way that traditional astronomy clubs and magazines could not (Coppa, 2006).
The site contains a plethora of cultural products that participants have contributed to the SETI@home universe, including illustrations, screensaver graphics, poems, and even songs, like this elegy or epitaph for the defunct SETI@
home Classic, now superseded by BOINC:
I’ve been a classic-cruncher for many a year
and I’ve spent all my money on electricity and gear
now I’m returning with WU’s [work unit] in great store
and I never will run seti-classic no more 8
8. http://members.chello.nl/p.goolaerts/SetiClassic/mp3ss4.htm. Accessed October 8, 2018

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What most of the space buffs who make a substantial contribution to theproject seem to have in common, and which they share with the hardware
hackers, is a taste for competition and tinkering with their hardware and adetermination to seek out increasingly sophisticated techniques in the race forpoints. Indeed, the highest-ranking participant in this class (the one with thegreatest number of points per month) describes himself as a “budding amateur astronomer” who has always “dreamt of building [his] own telescope,although yet to realise it.” This participant frequently posts in project forums,
and almost all of his posts are on the “number crunching” technical message
board, which is dedicated to computation. He relates that he has installed
BOINC on two computers in his office, on his partner’s computer, and on
five machines at home. These machines are basically computer components
without a keyboard or monitor, networked and given over exclusively to theproject’s computational tasks. He notes that he often needs to turn on the air
conditioning to keep the room cool, as these machines run twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week. Rather than putting together his own telescope, thisenthusiast has put together his own hardware suite, and he devotes time to discussing future purchases and offering advice to newcomers, particularly thoseinterested in building “SETI farms” like his. The goal here is to earn morepoints while experimenting with hardware, if, indeed, it is not possible tocommandeer all computers belonging to family, friends, and colleagues; onethird of SETI@home participants have installed the program on two or moremachines. The trend for installing BOINC on a large number of computerseven has its own moniker among the “cruncher” community on SETI@home:“borging.” However, as we will see, this kind of effort is particularly typicalof hardware hackers.
We would have expected that space buffs, who present themselves and makesense of their involvement by reference to space itself, would have been thelink between traditional amateur science and online citizen science. Ultimately,
however, they have only a distant relationship to offline amateur astronomy
communities. Only a very small proportion of participants mention amateur
astronomical observation in constructing coherent biographies and proffering their reasons for taking part in SETI@home. Paradoxically, it is as if themoral hierarchy implied by the epistemic distinctions mobilized in traditional
amateur astronomy communities has been adopted in the SETI@home universe in inverted form. The link to observation is weak, although this element is a defining part of offline astronomy, while the consumption of culturalDocument downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Université de Genève - - 129.194.139.57 - 14/01/2020 12h29. © La Découverte

Sic itur ad astra

Stars in their eyes?   XXI

products, regarded as ancillary and passive offline, is given a central role.
Finally, these participants frequently engage in experimenting with and customizing their machines, something that is viewed as a fringe subculture in theoffline world (Williams, 2000; Howe, 2009). Certainly, there are some participants who show an interest in space as well as an enthusiasm for technology,
and for whom the appeal of the object of inquiry is therefore combined withthat of the medium. However, it is essentially the hardware hackers who are
the powerhouse of the project, with their discursive focus on the technicaldata processing driving it.
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SCREWDRIVERS AT DAWN: HARDWARE HACKERSThe hardware hackers group represents those profiles in which participants opt
to give center stage to the “nuts and bolts” of their contribution to SETI@home,which often have very little to do with science in general or astronomy in particular. Rather, their efforts are channeled toward the project medium itself. If welook at SETI@home’s migration to BOINC, it is clear that certain users selecttheir projects not on the basis of scientific field (astronomy, biology, physics,etc.) but because of the technical features of the “work units” involved and the
speed with which they can be completed. Ultimately, the research objective
has little importance for these hardware hackers, who are far more concernedwith the apparatus itself. Indeed, in their ways of presenting themselves anddescribing their involvement in the project we can identify—in contrast to a
retrospective discourse that aims to frame SETI@home as a pioneer of today’s
citizen science movement—a hazier and more fragmented conception, where
the project’s scientific dimension is of secondary importance.
“Show and tell your machine. Here’s mine.” E.T.: end or means?
I’ve been running SETI for almost a year now. I am currently running it on
7 machines ranging from a PII-333 to a Pentium IV-200 all of which process
an average of 6 units per day! I really enjoy trying to process as many units as
I can each day, and hopefully, I’ll be able to upgrade these machines to CPUs
that will really make a difference! Donations of old computers and cash arewelcome ;-) ‒ Profile no. 3328

As we have observed, hardware hackers devote significant effort to
SETI@home, and the success of the project can largely be attributed to their

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involvement. Beyond their point scores, discussion spaces like the forums
demonstrate this clearly; more than half (57 percent) of all threads are postedon the “number crunching” board, where conversations center around metrics, rankings, and microprocessor performance. In the thread entitled “Showand tell your machine. Here’s mine,” participants show off their hardware in
meticulously staged photographs. These images testify to the artistry of theseexperimenters: open chassis, spare parts fresh from the box, assemblages held
together with tape, makeshift fans, casings with holes punched in them . . .
here, it’s not just make and model that matter, but also the user’s inventiveness in finding solutions to technical problems, most importantly the difficulty of getting enough airflow through the equipment and cooling the room
it occupies. These participants will pay for top-of-the-range equipment andweigh up the necessary investment against the performance they can expect.
This investment may be substantial, amounting to hundreds, if not thousandsof dollars (Curtis, 2018). For crunchers, taking part in the project is about far
more than donating unused computing capacity; they are prepared to invest
both time and money in assembling a state-of-the-art hardware suite. Their
DIY methods and the attendant narrative established on the forums help markthem out as different. Each machine or suite of machines is unique, just likeits designer. In some participants, an enthusiasm for crunching is combinedwith an aesthetic sensibility; flaunting windowed side panels and LEDs thatglow in synchronization with processing activity, they display a knack for thelive theater of computation (Giraud, 2005). Beyond the hardware set-up itself,
another technique involves overclocking the microprocessor or graphics cardso that it runs at a higher speed, a practice that also differentiates participants
and helps them move more quickly up the leaderboard.
As more participants engage in crunching and in building their hardware, thepurpose of SETI@home may eventually be turned on its head. We can imagine a near future where the processing work is no longer a means to the endof tracking down E.T., and instead the search for E.T. has become a means
to the end of calibrating computational power. Indeed, when we examine theprofiles of those individuals with the highest monthly scores, we see that they
use the platform in a very specific way. The current top-ranked participant interms of points uses the program for testing hardware in a data center, according to a post written at a time when he was taking part in a competition. 9
9. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=75223&sort_style=8&start=75.
Accessed October 12, 2018.

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By virtue of the fact that it offers a simple, free platform that happens to
be particularly effective in gauging how quickly a CPU can perform computational tasks, SETI@home is sometimes used as a tool for benchmarking
machines and comparing their performance. Of course, this is a source of
frequent debates over whether such users should be eligible to take part in thecompetitions organized by certain teams.10 Thanks to sociological studies oftechnology use, we have known for some time that users of a given technology often invent new usages that supplant its purpose as originally conceived(Akrich, 2013). SETI@home is no exception to that rule.
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Machines and masculinity
Hello, my name is Daniel [...]. I manage one IT company. I am a member of
BOINC.SK crunching team. I love computers and nice girls. I don’t likebuying with my woman :( ‒ Profile no. 32326“Show and tell your machine. Here’s mine.”: there is surely no need to linger on the inherently masculine connotations of this expression. This is not a
direct consequence of the fact that 90 percent of participants in SETI@home
are male, but rather of the way the platform attracts those who move in circles
that cultivate certain forms of masculinity. Coming across almost as a caricature, the individual who began this thread is strikingly fond of terms such as“feminist cabal” or “feminazis” to describe militant feminism; this aggressive
masculinity is rooted in his military service, which women, unfairly in hiseyes, are not obliged to undertake. While admittedly an extreme example,
this profile is by no means an isolated case. We have seen that the military isa recurring theme among retired technicians, as is scouting, which this groupis more likely to mention than any other. The system of rankings, badges, andcompetition devised by the creators of SETI@home is not entirely dissimilar
to the normative framework associated with scouting (Rosenthal, 1984); likethe army, it represents a crucial site for the construction of American masculinity (Barrett, 1996; Jordan, 2016).
In the context of SETI@home, these relatively closely related forms of masculinity are interspersed with another, more strongly associated with the IT
professions. It is a form of masculinity that has developed as more and moremen have begun to pursue careers as programmers—a role originally envisaged for women (Ensmenger, 2015). Scruffy dress and a zest for “battles”
that push people to their physical limits (the idea being to code for as long

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as possible without stopping to sleep or even eat) are both telltale signs thata participant embraces this particular form of masculinity. Essentially, building customized computers, a pastime that is the defining feature of hardware
hackers, is one more practice through which men express their masculinity,
especially in a domestic setting. While some participants reveal that they haveinstalled BOINC on workplace computers, the many photographs of IT equipment posted are overwhelmingly taken in a home environment, whether in aliving room, bedroom, or dedicated computer room—the equivalent of the
DIY or ham radio enthusiast’s garage or attic (Gelber, 1997; Haring, 2007).
These are privileged, masculine spaces, set apart from the usual milieu offamily life. Rather than constituting a digital extension of traditional amateur
astronomical science, SETI@home is best understood through this distinct
strain of DIY spirit and technical handiwork. At the intersection of these hobbyist cultures, all imbued with a particular form of masculinity, a material
engagement with technology (the computer) cannot be separated from—andis, in fact, reinforced by—a concomitant social engagement (the battle forpoints). Through this nexus, SETI@home becomes a remarkably effective
socio-technical assemblage.
CONCLUSIONSETI@home offers participants a virtual space of self-presentation that, insofar as it suggests a certain set of pre-defined variables, appears very similar in
structure to the open questionnaires well-known to researchers in the social
sciences, minus the usual difficulties of administration. Where it differs fromthese questionnaires is the way in which responses are produced through apublic dialogue between actors, rather than through an interaction with theresearcher. First, these responses reflect questions posed by participants themselves; second, they are made in a public way. These two aspects of the context in which these texts are produced makes them a very specific kind ofresource that merits a tailored approach. It would be tempting, for example, toseek to derive from them a sociodemographic portrait of project participants,
or to compile lists of off-the-shelf motivations that simply require some kindof synthesis. However, much to the researcher’s chagrin, this material is stubbornly resistant to any form of predefined analysis. Conversely, it seems aparticularly promising source for understanding the real processes at work in
the construction of participation and participant identity in an online citizen
science project such as SETI@home.

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To its creators, the idea of setting up a distributed computing network was
more than a tempting technical challenge: it was also a response to two aspirations that we might describe as political. The first of these aspirations, steepedin a self-confessed nostalgia for the glory days of the space age, was to enlist
the American public to come together around an ambitious scientific project
and transform a passive TV audience into a nation engaged in the advancement of science. In quantitative terms, the launch of SETI@home in 1999
was a decisive success; it attracted so many participants that the infrastructure
at the University of Berkeley initially designed to support it was frequently
overwhelmed in the first few months. Beyond the numbers, the relational
dimension of the project, the sense of uniting a nation, can also be seen in thetendency for participants to form teams. The vast majority of those battling
it out at the top of the leaderboard display a national flag, with teams united
by a love of astronomy itself trailing behind. The emergence of the SETI.
USA team in 2005 is a perfect example, because it came about as a resultof an explicit desire to challenge the prevailing champions, predominantly
German, and to dethrone SETI.Germany. 10 Thus, far from promoting theideal of global scientific collaboration and citizens of all nationalities working
together toward a common goal, SETI@home reproduces nationalisms andrivalries between countries, much like the great space exploration programs
did during the Cold War (McCray, 2008).
The second aspiration was to provide US citizens with a means of conveying, through action rather than votes, the kind of science they would like thegovernment to fund. By offering a wide choice of different options, creating akind of “decision market,” the BOINC platform allows users to express theirpriorities through the projects they support, shifting decision-making powerfrom governmental bodies to the public (Anderson, 2004). In 2020, BOINC
is set to be replaced by a new platform, Science United, that will enable users
to indicate which fields of research, rather than individual projects, theywould like to see supported. 11 Just as before, this initiative aims to “educate
the public” and to “foster public interest in science.” Education, democratization, and the advancement of science—the three promises made by today’s
citizen science (Strasser et al., 2019)—are frequently put forward by participants themselves in their responses to questionnaires on their motivations and10. https://www.setiusa.us/showthread.php?186-SETI-USA-Team-History. Accessed October 5,
2018.
11. NSF Grant no. 1664190 “Collaborative Research: SI2-SSI: Expanding Volunteer
Computing” awarded to David Anderson, 2017–2020.

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Our analysis of textual evidence produced by SETI@home participants inbuilding their public profiles sheds light on the tension between this imagined public and the public that chooses to get involved in this kind of digitalastronomy project. It allows us to sketch out distinct forms of commitment
and modes of engagement that are quite removed from both this imagined
public and the world of amateur astronomy, which represents a traditionalmodel of non-professional involvement in science. To understand the sociotechnical assemblage formed by SETI@home, we must untangle the very
different lineages of its tribes of users, ranging from sci-fi fans to retired soldiers/engineers to amateur computer builders. Equally crucial are the routes toadoption generated by the project’s own mechanisms of competition, whichhave nothing to do with the goal of identifying alien life. Nor is this goal apriority for hardware testers, who put SETI@home to a very different use
than initially intended, or for the friends and family enlisted to help pick upsome extra points in the general hustle for credit that is the hallmark of thisassemblage. While “contributing to the advancement of science,” the mostfrequently cited motive in closed-question surveys, rings out across all profile types, the fact remains that interest in science is very much an incidental
driver, accounting for only 3 percent of posts in the SETI@home forums. The
heaviest users, those who form the mainstay of the project’s work, are lesslikely to have stars in their eyes than a screwdriver in hand, forging their own
customized machines as they forge their masculinity.
In light of the very broad spectrum of users, we might well ask what it is that
holds this heterogeneous community together. Contrary to the designs of the
project’s creators, who sought to promote the unifying power of “science,”
we would argue that it is the SETI@home apparatus itself, with its screensaver, its gamified competitiveness, and its discussion forums, that makes thissense of commonality possible. The way in which participants construct theiridentities as participants and formulate and display their individuality cannot
be extricated from the medium—that is, SETI@home as a socio-technicalassemblage. The story of SETI@home is therefore not a tale of the democratization of astronomy, but the story of a new kind of technological artefact
capable of pooling the output capacity of computers all over the world. This
artefact cannot be uncoupled from the common normative order by which it
is governed, which takes the form of a vast, competitive game. Rather than

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Nov et al., 2014).

Stars in their eyes?   XXVII

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bringing humans face to face with alien lifeforms, this order establishes arivalry between human users operating through their machines—or, perhaps,
between machines operating through their human users. In seeking to groundthe origin story of citizen science in the specific evolution of SETI@home,by virtue of its irrefutable quantitative success or its lofty foundational goalof uniting the American people through science, we overlook the very thingthat has allowed the project to endure for so long, piling work units onto
work units—namely, the commitment of a small number of participants witha passion for the apparatus itself. Looking beyond SETI@home, there is no
doubt that our understanding of a significant part of the world of online citizen science could be enriched by focusing less on participation or scienceand more on the technology itself, asking not “who is taking part?” or “howis knowledge being produced?” but rather, “what is the apparatus sustaining
this project?”.

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XXVIII   Réseaux n° 214-215/2019

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

Stars in their eyes?   XXXIAPPENDICES

Simple classification of profile texts. Elimination of unrecognizable textual forms.
Number of texts: 39,699
Maximum number of classes = 10
Minimum number of segments per class = automatic
Number of classes derived: 6
34,711 texts classified out of 39,699 (87.44%)
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Parameters for classifying texts produced for the “thoughts about
the project” section and dendrogram for class 5 (space buffs)
Simple classification of text segments. Elimination of unrecognizable textual forms
Number of texts: 4,297
Maximum number of classes = 50
Minimum number of segments per class = 43
Number of text segments derived: 33,070
Number of classes derived: 429,771 segments classified out of 33,070 (90.02%)

Source: IRaMuTeQ; analysis conducted by the authors.

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A. Parameters for figure 2

XXXII   Réseaux n° 214-215/2019

Simple classification of text segments. Elimination of unrecognizable textual forms.
Number of texts: 3,588
Maximum number of classes = 50
Minimum number of segments per class = 36
Number of text segments derived: 25,471
Number of classes derived: 8
22, 349 segments classified out of 25,471 (87.74%)
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Source: IRaMuTeQ; analysis conducted by the authors.

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B. Parameters for classifying texts produced for the “thoughts about the
project” section and dendrogram for class 6 (hardware hackers)