LAUSR

Stakeholders from academia, industry, funding agencies, and scholarly publishing are increasingly investing in open data partially in the hope that it will democratize science and promote more diverse data reuse. However, fewer studies examine how unconventional communities outside academia and industry use open data. Through an investigative digital ethnography, I observed the data practices of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) skeptics, specifically how they discuss, evaluate, and reuse open data. This poster focuses on the knowledge infrastructure that affords the data practices of ACC skeptics. I argue that ACC skeptics are building a parasitic knowledge infrastructure on the back of the climate science knowledge infrastructure it often seeks to discredit. Understanding the infrastructure that supports skeptics' data reuse can inform how we design policies and infrastructure to actualize open data's promises while minimizing its perils.