Agrifood related social controversies tend to involve scientific issues and advocacy groups increasingly turn to citizen science (CS), participatory data taking by regular people, to produce health and environmental data. A common assumption is that CS’s value lies in the data produced, and its volume and quality decide its persuasive power. This article describes participatory monitoring of genetically engineered rapeseed (canola) in Japan to suggest that social movements can leverage CS not only for the production of scientific data but also as occasions for recruitment, political awareness-raising, and collaboration with other civic organizations. The article proposes a new framework for understanding CS–social movement relations that is multi-actor (vs. expert–laypeople dyad); process-oriented (vs. product/data-oriented); and long-term (vs. one-shot and isolated data taking). There is an increasing awareness of the diversity of CS. Even those that are led by grassroots organizations have multiple and shifting uses of data and foster varying political subjectivity among participants. The proposed framework helps to understand the dynamics that shape such heterogeneous pathways of CS.

与农业食品有关的社会争议往往涉及科学问题，拥护团体越来越多地转向公民科学（CS），即普通人的参与性数据来产生健康和环境数据。一个普遍的假设是，CS的价值在于所产生的数据，而其数量和质量决定了它的说服力。本文介绍了对日本转基因油菜籽（canola）的参与式监测，以表明社会运动不仅可以利用CS来生产科学数据，而且还可以作为招聘，政治意识提高以及与其他民间组织合作的机会。本文提出了一个新的框架，用于理解CS与社会运动的关系，它是多方面的（相对于专家-外行人二分法）。面向过程（相对于产品/数据）；和长期（相对于 一键式和孤立的数据获取）。人们越来越意识到CS的多样性。即使是由基层组织领导的组织，也对数据具有多种多样且不断变化的使用，并在参与者之间培养出不同的政治主观性。所提出的框架有助于理解影响CS此类异质途径的动力学。