The digital transformation creates opportunities for participation on the one
hand, while it renders established routines of societal communication frag­ile on the other. In scholarship in particular, the disruptive media innovations of digitalisation are calling the orders of knowledge into question
and foster a process of opening up formerly closed systems in the course of
establishing various forms of Open Science. In this process, the social figure
of the expert as a link between scholarship and the public is also subject to
fundamental changes. This chapter traces these changes with reference to
sociological concepts of expertise and highlights the performative aspects of
various kinds of enactments of expertise which are not bound to institutionally warranted authorities and imply a dissolution of boundaries of expertise.
This is exemplified by two case studies. First, academic communication by
experts on Social Media is analysed. Platforms like Twitter allow for a partic­ipatory style of academic communication and foster public engagement with
research on the one hand, while producing irritations by the provisional and
discursive nature of the presented knowledge on the other. Second, the chapter analyses negotiation of expertise in comments of science-related YouTube
videos. It shows that under the conditions of digital communication and
networked publics the question of who can be considered an expert and for
what reasons is highly contested. In conclusion, the chapter argues that the
potentials of digital media for participatory scholarship come with the risk of
being perceived as fragmented and contingent.