Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies
type: channel
description: The Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies (NJSTS) is an Open Access academic journal published at NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture. The journal has a broad interest in the interrelationship between science, technology and society with a particular focus on research in the Nordic region. We welcome contributions on topics related to science and technology that engages with Science and Technology Studies (STS) different ways, including: the making of technology and science , the role of scientific and technological governance, the relationship between politics, technology and science, public understanding of science, as well as user perspectives on technology and science and the social consequences of technology. NJSTS is committed to advancing cross-disciplinary studies that engages with STS scholarship in various intersections of social science, the humanities, and the natural and technical sciences.
publisher: NTNU
language: en
publication name: Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies
issn: 1894-4647
copyright: All content in NJSTS is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. This means that anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the material as they like, provided they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
items: Editorial
items: Script Tales from a Rural Participatory Research Process
items: Tinkering with vulnerability in video consultation encounters in Danish general practice
items: About cover artist
items: Knowledge, technologies and the police
items: Longing and Lacking
items: About the cover artist
items: A pragmatic approach to building a field and doing STS
items: The emergence of feminist technoscience in the nordics
items: Toward a brighter future: Confronting the shadows of STS
items: Celebrating young scholars
items: A matter of facts
items: Making space for digital statecraft
items: From crime scenes to digital spaces
items: Beyond error detection
items: Negotiating digital traces
items: More-Than-One Health
items: Seeing as One?
items: I love it
items: With microbes
items: No rose on this one?
items: Conducting caring collaborations in societally engaged research
items: The Politics of Valuation
items: The construction of matches in dating platforms
items: Money, time, or saving the world
items: Incorporation work
items: Ethical boundary work in citizen science
items: Editorial: Care in STS

Editorial
type: item
description: The year 2025 seemed to unfold as if someone had pressed a fastforward button, propelling us forward at an unprecedented pace. Artificial intelligence (AI) swept rapidly into nearly every aspect of daily life and across platforms and sectors, ‘AI’ became a feature eagerly integrated into various practices. In academia, AI has become deeply entangled with the routines of research and writing, offering efficiency and new possibilities for knowledge production, while also provoking intense and highly warranted debates over academic integrity, authorship, and the evolving norms of scholarly communication. These developments are collectively reshaping the rhythms and directions of academic work. In the editorial for the 2025 issue, inspired by Haraway‘s “think with trouble” (Haraway, 2016) , we invite readers to think with the change: to linger with their tensions, to follow the questions they unsettle, and to explore how they reshape our practices and understandings toward the future of academia.
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Shan Wang
creator: Kristine Ask
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Shan Wang, Kristine Ask http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i2.6593

Script Tales from a Rural Participatory Research Process
type: item
description: This article critically reflects on a participatory research and co-design process within rural energy transitions, focusing on energy citizenship in the small town of Overhalla in Norway. Based on Citizen Action Labs (CALs) - as a participatory co-design tool - this article is a retrospective methodological reflection that addresses the research question: How are expectations of a more participatory energy transition enacted in a rural community? The paper aims to understand the limits of participatory research and co-design processes and problematise the idea of energy citizenship as a desirable form of participation in a rural context. The research highlights rural areas’ unique challenges and opportunities, contrasting them with urban-centric approaches often prevalent in participatory research and co-design processes. Through the lens of script theory, the study illustrates how urban-focused ideals may be misaligned with various rural realities, as evidenced by differing responses to energy citizenship frameworks. Key findings underscore the necessity for context-specific participatory methods that accommodate diverse rural areas’ distinct social, spatial, and economic landscapes and resources. This work contributes to expanding and nuance our understanding of how rural communities can actively participate in sustainable energy transitions, emphasizing the need for tailored approaches in participatory research and co-design processes.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Lina Naoroz Bråten
creator: Berit Therese Nilsen
creator: Pasi Aalto
creator: Lucia Liste
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lina Naoroz Bråten, Berit Therese Nilsen , Pasi Aalto, Lucia Liste http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i2.6368

Tinkering with vulnerability in video consultation encounters in Danish general practice
type: item
description: Video consultations constitute an emerging technology in Danish general practice, offering new ways for physicians and patients to interact. While previous studies have shown video consultations to be time-efficient, they have also revealed experiences of social and emotional distance between patients and physicians. Little is known about how the use of video consultations and its embedded efficiency interact with aspects of vulnerability and how these unfold in a consultation formed with less social presence. In this article, we draw in part on the broad definition of vulnerability as a potential for harm. We explore how video consultations affect these potentials for harm and the relationship between vulnerability and video consultation use through the lens of science and technology studies (STS). Viewed through this lens, vulnerability is an enacted property that emerges and evolves through interactions between actors, i.e., within the network between patients, technology, and general practitioners (GPs). We present four cases of video consultations, as we show how vulnerability can be enacted in video consultation encounters and illustrate how the dynamic nature of vulnerability can be “tinkered with”, i.e., adjusted and modified, through technology-mediated assemblages such as video consultations.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: johannes van den heuvel
creator: Elisabeth Assing Hvidt
creator: Janus Laust Thomsen
creator: Camilla Hoffmann Merrild
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 johannes van den heuvel, Elisabeth Assing Hvidt, Janus Laust Thomsen, Camilla Hoffmann Merrild http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-04-16
publication date: 2026-04-16
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v14i1.6357

About cover artist
type: item
description: Mønster 6 is painted by visual artist Barbro Maria Tiller (b. 1953). Tiller is educated at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and works from her studio at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder. She works with collages, printmaking, painting, and drawing, as well as larger concept-based projects.
subject: Miscellaneous
  topic: section
creator: Kristine Ask
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Kristine Ask http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.6335

Knowledge, technologies and the police
type: item
description: This issue of the Nordic Journal of Science and Technology (NJSTS) is edited by the members of the research project ‘A Matter of Facts: Flows of Knowledge through Digitalized Police Practices’. The project is carried out at the Norwegian Police University College and is funded by the Research Council of Norway (grant 301762). The aim of the project is to explore digital knowledge production in policing. Digitalization plays a major role in current plans and strategies within the Norwegian Police Service and digitalization is drawn out as a key process both for fighting and preventing crime as well as increasing efficiency of police work in general. As digital tools are presented as the solution to a host of challenges, there is also a need for more critical reflections on how digitalization affect police practices and knowledge production. Our project thus asks; in what ways does digitalized police practices affect the production of knowledge, both within the police, and in their contact with the public?
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Jenny Maria Lundgaard
creator: Brita Bjørkelo
creator: Guro Flinterud
creator: Johanne Yttri Dahl
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Jenny Maria Lundegaard, Brita Bjørkelo, Guro Flinterud, Johanne Yttri Dahl http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.6334

Longing and Lacking
type: item
description: This article examines the intersection of three key developments in global north societies: the growing emphasis on (in)security and fear of crime, the expansion and pluralization of policing, and the increasing digitalization of crime policy arenas. Focusing on the implementation of “System X”, a leading Swedish crime prevention technology, this study explores how these trends manifest in daily municipal work. Employing the concepts of articulation work and sociotechnical imaginaries, the analysis reveals how expectations of System X are socialized and materialized in practice. Findings demonstrate that public officials legitimize System X by contrasting its promise of future evidence-based crime prevention with a rejected “unsystematic past”. Their daily often extremely time-consuming work, navigating both practical challenges and expectations of new technological solutions, reinforces their commitment through discursive and material vouching for System X. This implementation process involves a dialectic of anticipation and everyday challenges, with broader securitization discourses driving fear of crime, simultaneously capitalizing on techno-optimism. Challenges in this way constitute a presupposition for the work in that they legitimize the relevance of imagining the systematic future. As a sociotechnical imaginary, security technologies like System X intersects with larger worldmaking and wider trends in plural policing and security markets. The implementation requires the public officials to exist in the past, present and future simultaneously, transforming imagined goals into meaningful present-day practices. This dynamic underscores the need for critical analyses of how optimism-driven technology co-exist with, and potentially obscures the complex realities it aims to address.
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Katarina Winter
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Katarina Winter http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5857

About the cover artist
type: item
description: Nienke Bruijning is a research assistant and illustrator with an academic background in science and technology studies (STS) and media science, through which she developed an interest in studying the intricate relationships that form between humans and the technologies we surround ourselves with on a daily basis.
subject: Opinion piece
  topic: section
creator: Nienke Bruijning
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nienke Bruijning http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.6192

A pragmatic approach to building a field and doing STS
type: item
description: The last scholar featured in our anniversary issue is professor emeritus Knut H. Sørensen. Sørensen has a decades long history working in science and technology-studies and played a key role in establishing the Centre for Technology and Society at the Department of interdisciplinary studies of culture (KULT) at NTNU. Sørensen is one of several key contributors to STS and in this interview, we will draw insights from his long career and explore STS as a changing field. Sørensen has witnessed the starting point, the development, as well as many changes in this field throughout his career. In this interview he reflects on how the field has developed and how it is a story about building STS institutions, and the many strategic choices it involves. We are reminded of how the making of science involves specific people, doing specific things at specific times and places. It is a chance to see behind a name put in as “standard citation” and see a person who combined ambition and pragmatism with hard work to make something happen. Revisiting the history of our field is also a chance to remind ourselves of how different things could have turned out; if they hadn’t come across that specific paper or hadn’t received funding at that time. In this interview we will touch on important contributions, about being pragmatic with external funding and research topics, how STS has changed as a field, the importance of advising and investing in students and what life is like now as an emeritus.
subject: Miscellaneous
  topic: section
creator: Kristine Ask
creator: Shan Wang
creator: Nora Kristiansson
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Kristine Ask, Shan Wang, Nora Kristiansson http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.6191

The emergence of feminist technoscience in the nordics
type: item
description: Our second interviewee for this special issue is Professor is Cecilia Åsberg, a leading figure in Feminist STS. She is a professor at the Department of Thematic Studies (TEMA) at Linköping University (https://liu.se/en/organisation/liu/tema) and the founder of the Posthumanities Hub (https://posthumanitieshub.net). Her research revolves around the natural or non-human as opposed to the human, in a world shaped by technoscience and environmental change. Her career narrative was incredibly engaging, prompting us to collaborate with her on editing the interview to give it a more cohesive and speech-like flow. Our pleasant one-hour conversation revolved around the themes of Feminist STS in the Nordics and academia as a community.
subject: Miscellaneous
  topic: section
creator: Maria Kirpichenko
creator: Sofia Moratti
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Maria Kirpichenko, Sofia Moratti http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.6190

Toward a brighter future: Confronting the shadows of STS
type: item
description: As part of the Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies’ 10th anniversary, we want to end the anniversary issue by reflecting upon the future of the field. To do so, we invited a young scholar in the STS field to partake in an interview with us. We think it is fitting to end with a young critical voice, as it is the next generation who will shape the field and ultimately decide the future of STS. We had the pleasure of interviewing Claudia Gertraud Schwarz who earned her PhD from the University of Vienna in 2014. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, where her research and praxis focus on generating and studying interventions to improve wellbeing in society, especially for young people. She is also one of the co-founders of the STS community known as the FeminiSTS Repair Team.
subject: Miscellaneous
  topic: section
creator: Birgitte Nygaard
creator: Kim-Andre Myhre Arntsen
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Nygaard Birgitte, Arntsen Kim-Andre Myhre http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.6189

Celebrating young scholars
type: item
description: The Nordic Journal of Science and Technology (NJSTS) celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2023, have used the occasion to direct attention toward young scholars in STS and bring in reflections about how STS is changing as a field.
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Kristine Ask
creator: Sofia Moratti
creator: Kim-Andre Myhre Arntsen
creator: Shan Wang
creator: Nora Kristiansson
creator: Birgitte Nygaard
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Ask Kristine, Moratti Sofia, Arntsen Kim-Andre Myhre, Wang Shan, Kristiansson Nora, Nygaard Birgitte http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.6188

A matter of facts
type: item
description: Digitalisation and the use of technology are at the core of knowledge production in policing. This paper presents various ways in which perspectives from the diverse field of science and technology studies (STS) can provide new insights into studies of policing. In detail, we suggest ways in which STS, with its broad and open perspectives, can be employed to investigate how different practices involving human–technology interaction within policing act as authorisation processes that turn uncertain information into facts. Through theoretical and empirical examples, we exemplify how STS perspectives can be used to address knowledge construction in three areas of police: operative practices, online presence, and criminal investigations. These examples demonstrate that perspectives from STS are relevant to many areas of policing as digitalisation and the production of digital information affect and change policing, not only at the micro-level but also as a whole. By doing this, we hope to present the field of STS with an organisation that is less commonly associated with it and police researchers with new perspectives on the interplay between technology and knowledge in policing.
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Guro Flinterud
creator: Jenny Maria Lundgaard
creator: Brita Bjørkelo
creator: Johanne Yttri Dahl
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Guro Flinterud, Jenny Maria Lundgaard, Brita Bjørkelo, Johanne Yttri Dahl http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5877

Making space for digital statecraft
type: item
description: Models for “digital transformation” are the current idiom for guiding digitalisation practice within key Norwegian state agencies, including the police. In this article, we follow how a team of state auditors encounter these models as they seek to evaluate the digitalisation work of the Norwegian Police Service. As we show in this paper, these models offer a clear direction for managers struggling with achieving digital change. Yet while proposing distinct steps to follow and criteria to fulfil to enable the complex organizational and technological development processes that allow them to reach “digital maturity”, the models stop short of giving a specific recipe for how to get there. Through a detailed empirical study, we explore how such models, developed and promoted by management consultants, enter the public sector by means of books, meetings, and PowerPoint presentations. We show how the auditors and police officials engage with these models in different ways: For the auditors, they are tried out as a methodological aid in the process of evaluating the object of police digitalisation. For the police officials being audited, their chosen model helps them carve out a space for digitalisation, thereby becoming a useful aid in their internal political struggles. We argue that for the police, the model’s authority comes from their being solid and opaque at the same time. This paradox turns out to be highly productive and enables the model to act as a placeholder delineating a space for action for the police officials struggling to digitalise their sector.
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Gro Stueland Skorpen
creator: Hilde Reinertsen
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Gro Stueland Skorpen, Hilde Reinertsen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5858

From crime scenes to digital spaces
type: item
description: Ordinary objects can assume exceptional significance when discovered at crime scenes, providing valuable information for investigations while also offering insights into the routines of daily life and human behaviour – aspects that may contrast with the extraordinary circumstance of the crime itself. In this article, I follow the forensic journey of one such mundane object – a sock – that does not fit the pattern of other evidence in an investigation. The article zooms in on the moments in which the sock transmutes from ordinary to forensically informative through technological interactions that capture, document, and encapsulate its meanings. I argue that in forensic contexts, meaningful information necessitates a transcendence from material to digital spaces, in which a singular object is represented as multiple entities. This shift presents a unique lens through which to observe and understand process of knowledge production in investigatory police work. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 947681)
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Maja Vestad
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Maja Vestad http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5861

Beyond error detection
type: item
description: This study explores the performative role of checklists in enhancing the quality of digital forensic analysis and reporting within the criminal justice system. By drawing on theoretical frameworks such as Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory, the research examines how checklists extend beyond their procedural use and actively shape forensic practices. The study utilises the experiences of digital forensic practitioners during peer reviews within the Quality Control Project (Sunde & Dahl, 2023), revealing how checklists enact professional, ethical, and legal standards and thus shape forensic reports. The findings demonstrate that checklists do not merely guide actions, but function as dynamic actants, co-producing forensic outcomes through influencing both the content and quality of forensic reporting. Additionally, the research advocates for the public availability of checklists to enhance transparency, accountability, and trust in the credibility of digital forensic evidence. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the transformative capacity (Asdal, 2015) of checklists in forensic practices and invites further investigation into the sociomaterial impact of comparable devices in other fields.
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Nina Sunde
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Nina Sunde http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5856

Negotiating digital traces
type: item
description: Drawing on two empirical cases in different Norwegian police units, we explore how the increasing data gathering, recording, sorting, standardizing, and integration required by the Norwegian police's Intelligence Doctrine is experienced by users. Inspired by domestication theory, we provide new insights into police officers’ varied perceptions, interpretations, and use of data. Our main finding is that digital traces were not necessarily used as the steered and managed intelligence process envisioned in the Intelligence Doctrine, and that this led to various adverse outcomes. Police officers engaged with recorded and digital traces in varied ways—rejecting, resisting, ignoring, supporting, adopting, or negotiating them. The intelligence process was constrained by bias inherent to the system, which resulted from focusing information gathering on what was already available, and from connecting it to recurrent individuals and problems. In the processes of turning analogue objects into digital ones, police officers’ gut feeling and intuition still mattered, for example when information was selected for the crime intelligence system. The way the police related to the epistemic power of the data varied, but officers were obliged to relate to this uncertain element. Despite the standardized framework for how data should be applied, differences in practical routines, the digital tools used, symbolic work and learning processes revealed that its domestication in the police organization was messy. We found gaps between policy and practice, which can be seen both in unexpected workarounds and in solutions for organizing routines and everyday work. These reciprocal processes influenced and were influenced by police culture. As police intelligence evolves, the interpretation and utilization of recorded data may change, especially with the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence. Future research will show how police navigate between data-driven and observation-based narrati…
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Helene O. I. Gundhus
creator: Pernille Erichsen Skjevrak
creator: Christin Thea Wathne
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Helene O. I. Gundhus, Pernille Erichsen Skjevrak, Christin Thea Wathne http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5872

More-Than-One Health
type: item
description: One Health is a global health approach that emphasises collaboration across disciplines in response to diseases. It has gained popularity in recent decades, with the most recent definition by One Health High Level Council (OHHLEP) being: “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals and ecosystems.” (Braverman, 2023, p. 80). According to Steve Hinchliffe, this human-animalenvironment triad premises on specific ontological commitments to a one-world metaphysics. His Foreword sets the stage for the volume’s contributions through the question: “What is gained and what might be lost when one adopts the One Health signature?” (Hinchliffe, 2023, p. xx).
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Bernardo Couto Soares
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Bernardo Couto Soares http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-05-31
publication date: 2024-05-31
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.5913

Seeing as One?
type: item
description: From 2019, a one-year trial tested the use of drone technologies within the Norwegian Police Services. Drones, designed to facilitate the collection, storage, and dissemination of live film and images, were implemented with the expectation that shared visual data would enhance situational awareness and thus improve police practices. This study, based on ethnographic data collected during the trial period, examines how these new technological tools shape the practices of professional vision. It explores the relationship between seeing and knowing by looking at how drone technologies influence ‘the police gaze’ (Finstad, 2000), police officers’ collection and processing of their visual surroundings. As the human gaze merges with the drone gaze, visual data is produced and can be distributed in larger police operations. Drones were intended to simplify team decision-making by providing images considered true and certain, thus reducing the need for oral radio communication. However, paradoxically, one outcome of the trial was the creation of an observation manual for improving the oral conveying of drone-collected information. The findings underscore the complexities of police knowledge production, illustrating the intricate interactions between human and non-human agents in operational policing. While drones materialize and spread the police gaze, merely sharing images does not ensure a shared understanding of an incident or operation. Establishing mutual comprehension of incidents or operations remains a nuanced and delicate process.
subject: Special Issue Peer Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Jenny Maria Lundgaard
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Jenny Maria Lundgaard http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-03-05
publication date: 2025-03-05
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i1.5869

I love it
type: item
description: Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through renovation of the existing building stock is high on national and international agendas, but a broader understanding that includes building inventory and the circular economy is not often included. By 2028, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) plans to consolidate university campuses and rehabilitate up to 45 000 m2 of buildings. There are some signs of circular economy at the university in institutionally established practices such as waste sorting, and green procurement, but there exists a greater potential. In 2021, the authors organised a living lab at the university, aiming to investigate whether further measures could be implemented to reduce the consumption of university inventory, such as furniture and computer equipment. We found that reuse, in contrast to the centralised administrative provision of inventory, encouraged practices of care. The experiments in the living lab addressed the dominant homogeneity and standardised character of university fixtures and fittings, provoking enthusiasm for previously discarded and unwanted objects and offering opportunities for new caring relationships. The paper asks, in what ways caring practices are performed in efforts to reduce consumption and achieve sustainability goals in complex organisations such as universities. Data was collected during experiments organised as part of the living lab. The caring practices that we identified are context-aware, empowering, egalitarian, and avoid prioritising some kinds of practices and objects over others.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Ruth Woods
creator: Thomas Berker
creator: Thomas Edward Sutcliffe
creator: Hanne Marit Henriksen
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Ruth Woods, Thomas Berker , Thomas Edward Sutcliffe, Hanne Marit Henriksen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.5841

With microbes
type: item
description: With Microbes offers an analysis of the multiple, complex and dynamic relationships between humans and microbes and their entanglement in everyday life. Microbes have gained much attention from scientists, in popular culture, and by various actors looking to economize and regulate microbes, discussing questions such as the relationship between gut microbes and brain activity, the best ways to nurture kombuchas and sourdough starters, or use and understanding of microbes as medicine. I was intrigued to read the book both due to my own interest in nurturing a good microbiome and wanting to review how one can approach the subject through an innovative science and technology studies (STS) approach.
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Ivana Suboticki
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Ivana Suboticki http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-03-15
publication date: 2024-03-15
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v11i1.5867

No rose on this one?
type: item
description: This study explores how material qualities of tools contribute to shape information practices of observing, documenting, identifying and reporting species in biodiversity citizen science. Through participant observation and trace ethnography, information practices enacted during a field excursion at a World Heritage Site in south-eastern Sweden are investigated in relation to reported data submitted to the species observation system Artportalen. The study, which adopts a theoretical lens comprising the analytical concepts of epistemic objects and inscriptions, finds that the participants’ situated questioning, discussion, documenting and comparison of species through tool use establishes the observations as projections of knowledge claims. These projections are subsequently constrained but also appended as they are reported as data via Artportalen. As material qualities are generally made invisible, the reported data are augmented by the observation system when merged with other reports to aggregated data. The study extends knowledge concerning how biodiversity citizen science field excursions are conducted by understanding information practices and their outcomes as entangled activities characterised by negotiations in relation to material tools rather than as streamlined processes. Consequently, the results expand knowledge of the messy practices carried out to produce biodiversity citizen science data. Keywords: Botany, biodiversity, citizen science, information practices, materiality
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Björn Ekström
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Björn Ekström http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-02-28
publication date: 2024-02-28
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.5860

Conducting caring collaborations in societally engaged research
type: item
description: This article presents a conceptual literature review on the topic of care in research collaborations. The review covers 27 articles that complied with our focus. Based on the findings, we call for an increased acknowledgement of external collaborations (with external stakeholders) versus internal dimensions of collaboration (within research institutions). With regard to internal dimensions, we underline the role played by subjective motivation and working conditions, which impact the possibility of building impactful collaborations. In terms of external dimensions, we highlight the role of temporal constraints, which discourage the development of trust with societal actors, and the importance of power relations between researchers and participants. Finally, we identify dimensions which cut across the internal and external, such as affect, normative framings of research and measures of excellence. We conclude that the performance of caring collaborations is often constrained by measures of excellence, institutional constraints and policy regulations.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Anna Umantseva
creator: Katia Dupret
creator: Daniela Lazoroska
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Umantseva, Katia Dupret, Daniela Lazoroska http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-12-31
publication date: 2025-12-31
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v13i2.5629

The Politics of Valuation
type: item
description: This article has two aims: First, the article proposes to sensitize our analytical minds to what we dub “value disjunctures”—clashes, in practice, between different valuations. The article proposes a strategy for analyzing value disjunctures—paying attention to how different value worlds de-cohere. We ask: What happens if we highlight the periods and situations when versions of the world are pulled apart? Second, the article aims to highlight how today’s bioethics can neither be read as a tale of democratization of ethics, nor as a tale solely driven by ethical disasters. What we offer is a story of how the bioethical yardsticks of today were established as dominant in fetal research. The sensitizing concepts we propose shine a light on how bioethicalization is a historical process that intertwines what is good, with what objects are seen as important, as well as how these objects are understood. Bioethicalization is a struggle about valuations, which yardsticks for the good that become salient, but also a struggle about which objects should be valued, as well as the nature of these valued objects. This article highlights how all matters of value—the ethical, the epistemic, and the economic—are intertwined with changing ontologies, thus highlighting how ontologies and values are enacted together.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Francis Lee
creator: Solveig Jülich
creator: Isa Dussauge
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Francis Lee, Solveig Jülich, Isa Dussauge http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-13
publication date: 2024-11-13
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v12i1.5073

About the cover artist
type: item
description: About the cover artist
subject: Miscellaneous
  topic: section
creator: Kristine Ask
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Kristine Ask http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03

Editorial
type: item
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Sofia Moratti
creator: Kristine Ask
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Kristine Ask; Sofia Moratti http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03

The construction of matches in dating platforms
type: item
description: Dating platforms play the role of the traditional village matchmaker when they suggest potential partners that would be a good fit (‘match’). This paper reports from an in-depth study of the matching machinery of four dating platforms using a recommendation system based on a matchmaker model to suggest matches. While content-based recommendation systems form suggestions based on the users’ behaviour and interaction patterns, a matchmaker model uses information about the user to form recommendations. In the matchmaker model, what the IT system characterises as the ideal formation and a ‘good match’ is revealed. By using the reverse-engineering method, we find that of the four platforms investigated, three construct and form matches based on the couple’s degree of similarities along psychological and personal aspects, while one platform is based on a ‘the more similar along all kinds of axes, the better’-model. None of the platforms employs the anthropological hypergamy principle, which refers to the tendency of women to choose partners of similar or higher social status, while men do the opposite, into its matching account. Match value, which we conceptualise as the match score assigned by the platforms to couples, is a key component in the platforms’ matching machinery. Match value is a numeric value presented as an objective and scientific score, representing the degree of how well two persons ‘fit’ together. The platforms reduce individuals and relationships to a numeric value based on a psychological personality model, which ignores the person’s wider social network, class and context. The ranked order of matches does not consequently correspond with the match value, which suggests that the platforms provide benefits for paying members.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Lene Pettersen
creator: Runar Døving
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Lene Pettersen, Runar Døving http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-03-15
publication date: 2024-03-15
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v11i1.4948

Money, time, or saving the world
type: item
description: This paper analyses valuations of ‘good’ interdisciplinary research that manifest in research planning workshops. We use ethnographic case data from an interdisciplinary research project on vertical farming to build insight on how differing registers in the valuing of ‘good’ interdisciplinary research are balanced. The vertical farming project we use as a case includes researchers from sub-disciplines of the life sciences, technology, data science, and human sciences in a Finnish university of applied science (UAS). We use thematic content analysis to identify four core registers of valuing the ‘goodness’ of research and tensions between the following registers: money, sustainability, scientific value, and academic identity. These registers largely conform to a statistical-economical regime of academic evaluation, while sustainability draws on RRI principles and the interdisciplinary emphasis on societal problem-solving. The registers are balanced mainly through temporal and conceptual compartmentalisations. Throughout three workshop encounters over the course of a six-month period, a perpetual negotiation of the different registers of valuing ‘good’ research was taking place, with attempts to avoid exclusionary choices between “money, time, or saving the world”.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Laura Lamberg
creator: Essi Ryymin
creator: Liubov Vetoshkina
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Laura Lamberg, Essi Ryymin, Liubov Vetoshkina http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 30
ending page: 42
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v10i1.4305

Incorporation work
type: item
description: In this paper, we analyse how the socialisation of new science and technology (technoscience) is performed through newspapers. Newspapers remain an important source of information about emerging technosciences, such as bio- and nanotechnology, even in the age of new social media. This includes communication about scientific and technological developments but also about sense-making and imaginaries related to expectations about future effects. We analyse articles about bio- and nanotechnology to map who participates in such socialisation work and what kind of sense-making processes that are carried out. In this way, we provide insight into the mechanisms that may facilitate, curb or hinder the incorporation of these emerging technosciences into society. We observed four modes of socialisation work, which co-existed in the articles: (1) Auspicious, (2) anxious, (3) ambiguous, and (4) trivialisation. In the conclusion, we discuss the benefits of applying such a perspective to understand current policy instruments aimed at managing science-society relations and in particular to change their temporal focus to be more concerned with research and innovation that are closer to an application stage where work to incorporate new technoscience into society would be more effective.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Gisle Solbu
creator: Knut Holtan Sørensen
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Gisle Solbu, Knut H. Sørensen http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 17
ending page: 29
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v10i1.4020

Ethical boundary work in citizen science
type: item
description: The concept of boundary work (Gieryn 1983, 1999) has been developed to capture the ways in which scientists collectively defend and demarcate their intellectual territories. This article applies the concept of boundary work to the ethical realm and investigates the ethical boundary work performed by researchers in the field of citizen science (CS) through a literature review and by analysing accounts of ethics presented in CS literature. Results show that ethical boundary work in the CS literature is, to a large extent, a matter of managing ambiguities and paradoxes without any clear boundaries drawn between the unethical and ethical. Scientists are negotiating ethical positions, which might, occasionally, enhance the ethical authority of ‘non-science’ and non-scientists, as well as maintain already established research ethics. The main ethical boundary work in CS displays variations towards perceived insufficiencies of conventional research ethics to accommodate “outsiders”, addressing issues of distribution, relevance, and expulsion as science include volunteer contributors in the scientific process.
subject: Peer-Reviewed Articles
  topic: section
creator: Dick Kasperowski
creator: Niclas Hagen
creator: Frauke Rohden
rights: Copyright (c) 2021 Dick Kasperowski, Niclas Hagen, Frauke Rohden http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v10i1.4318

Editorial: Care in STS
type: item
description: During the last 10 years the Science and Technology Studies (STS) community has witnessed a flourishing, intense and multifaceted engagement around “care”. While care had been addressed already before in Joanna Latimer’s The conduct of care: Understanding nursing practice (Latimer, 2000) , and in Jeanette Pols’ Good care: Enacting a complex ideal in long term-psychiatry (Pols, 2004), care seemed to be on everybody’s lips around 2010. Around the same time, the edited volume Care in practice: On tinkering in clinics, homes and farms (Mol et al., 2010) and the article Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011) were published. With akin, yet partly diverging, agendas and concerns, these two key publications drastically increased the amount of research that identify with something like an area of “care studies” in STS. This can also be seen in the publication of special issues devoted to care during the last years, notably the much-cited 2015 issue in Social Studies of Science focused on feminist technoscience interventions into the politics and “darker sides” of care (Martin et al., 2015), and the more recent on relationalities and specificities of care in East Asian Science, Technology and Society (Coopmans & McNamara, 2020). Noteworthy is also the special issue on “The politics of policy practices” in The Sociological Review Monograph, where Gill et al. (2017) discuss how policy and care are entangled, and how such entanglements could be enacted more “care-fully”. These publications have spurred rich and generative engagements about ways to attend to the affective, ethico-political and/or material layers of care, within and beyond areas traditionally thought of as related to care (such as healthcare and childcare).
subject: Editorial
  topic: section
creator: Lisa Lindén
creator: Doris Lydahl
rights: Copyright (c) 2021 Lisa Lindén, Doris Lydahl http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2021-04-19
publication date: 2021-04-19
starting page: 3
ending page: 12
doi: 10.5324/njsts.v9i1.4000