Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Sharing and Emerging Postdigital Meaning-Making Practices in the Astronomy Community

Abstract

For decades, science communities have had digital technology embedded in their everyday work. However, new research infrastructures are amplifying the presence and use of digital technologies for scientists. In that respect, radio astronomy is undergoing a major transformation causing the community to enter a phase of postdigital work, due to the construction of the most sensitive telescope, the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO), which scales the presence of digital technology and the amount of data generated. As new digital research infrastructure is set up, sociotechnical imaginaries—symbols and visions of a shared future—emerge, while others become obsolete thus impacting structures and practices of meaning-making. In this paper, we explore the disruptive potential of sociotechnical imaginaries and how astronomers using SKA pathfinder and precursor telescope data respond to these imaginaries and incorporate them into their meaning-making. The analysis shows that postdigital imaginaries related to data circulation, storage, archiving, and reuse have been amplified as SKA facilities and services are set up. Two changes are highlighted regarding a new postdigital condition within the astronomy community. Firstly, as astronomers engage in new postdigital forms of collaboration, they need to reach a consensus on what types of analyses to use by agreeing which methods are appropriate. This affects how scientific questions and research proposals are negotiated collectively, impacting the agency of astronomers. Secondly, as digital tools are increasingly part of astronomers’ daily work, they have to rely on new data analysis methods, which determine what evidence is uninteresting. Overall, these changes pose new questions regarding how meaning-making processes are altered and the way science is undertaken because of these new entanglements of human and non-human actors.