Lay but not lacking : the collective production of “lay” expertise surrounding the German energy crisis of 2022+

Abstract

Debates within the geography of knowledge and the sociology of expertise have heretofore often occurred largely independently of one another. Drawing from both bodies of work, the phenomenon of ‘lay’ expertise - that developed by actors not conventionally seen as legitimate experts in a field - is explored. Amidst uncertainty during the German energy crisis of 2022, this paper inquires into the knowledge practices, performances of expertise, and community structures of an online forum in which ‘lay’ knowledge and expertise are produced. Resisting simplistic narratives of lay expertise as inferior expertise or outright disinformation, a differentiated analysis of the forum in question shows lay expertise to be a diverse phenomenon with at times highly sophisticated knowledge practices. Based on 9 months of online ethnography and 10 qualitative interviews, it is shown how expertise emerges at the collective level from repeated interactions between users which engage in depth with one another's contributions on the basis of an iterative process of peer correction, a common notion of what makes knowledge contributions valid, and shared socio-political values which gain salience at the backdrop of the crisis. Contributions to a growing corpus of ‘geographies of expertise’ are discussed.