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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
As disputes concerning the environment, the economy, and pandemics occupy public debate, we need to learn to navigate matters of public concern when facts are in doubt and expertise is contested.
Controversy Mapping is the first book to introduce readers to the observation and representation of contested issues on digital media. Drawing on actor-network theory and digital methods, Venturini and Munk outline the conceptual underpinnings and the many tools and techniques of controversy mapping. They review its history in science and technology studies, discuss its methodological potential, and unfold its political implications. Through a range of cases and examples, they demonstrate how to chart actors and issues using digital fieldwork and computational techniques. A preface by Richard Rogers and an interview with Bruno Latour are also included.
A crucial field guide and hands-on companion for the digital age, Controversy Mapping is an indispensable resource for students and scholars of media and communication, as well as activists, journalists, citizens, and decision makers.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Preface: The politics of association on display by Richard Rogers
Introduction
Controversies between technoscience and mediatized democracy
Controversy mapping between Actor-Network Theory and digital methods
The elephant in the room
What controversy mapping is not
A peek into the table of contents
Part One: Features of controversial landscapes
1 Why map controversies?
Accepting complicity as a mapmaker
Taking controversies seriously
Choosing a good controversy
On the risk of being overwhelmed
2 A proliferation of issues
Types of issues and sources of disagreement
Organized skepticism
Paradigmatic shifts
Priority disputes
Institutional struggles
Experimenter’s regress
Laboratory warfare
Skirmishes at the border of technoscience
Contested expertise
Path dependence and the social construction of technology
Large technological systems
Ontological politics
3 Making room for more actors
Bureaucrats and policymakers
Experts and lay experts
Scientific campaigners and professional skeptics
Scientific entrepreneurs
Non-human actors
The birth of Actor-Network Theory
The voice of the voiceless
Part Two: Tools of social cartography
4 Exploring controversies as actor-networks
Following actions with ethnography
Sorting observations with semiotics
ANT as an anti-theory
Four ways of observing collective actions
The truth of relation
The problem of reification
The problem of exclusivity
5 Exploring controversies with digital methods
The quest for quali-quantitative methods
Lessons from scientometrics
Digital methods beyond virtual research and computational social science
Digital media and the attention economy
The amplification and acceleration of public debate
6 Collecting and curating digital records
Follow the medium!
Querying
Scraping
Crawling
Curating
7 Visual network analysis
Visual network analysis in practice
Structural holes, clusters, and sub-clusters
Centers and bridges
Node ranking
Node typology
Turning relational structures into visual patterns
Exploratory data analysis and visual methods
The magmatic nature of relational phenomena
Networks are not actor-networks
Part Three: Politics of mapmaking
8 Representing controversies
Maps as descriptions
Maps as spaces for commensuration
Maps as instruments of power
Second-degree objectivity
Controversy atlases
Narration and exploration
Datascape navigation
9 Mapmaking as a form of intervention
Hybrid forums and parliaments of things
Controversy mapping as an open-air experiment
Data sprints
Critical proximity
Controversy mapping in the shadow of Gaia
The end of Nature
Learning from Penelope
A conversation with Bruno Latour
“A mix or maybe a mess of ideas”
“Every philosophy of science concept is in fact a simplification of a data structure”
“The word controversy has always been controversial”
“We believed we would have Tarde, and we got fake news”
“The temporal aspect of fact making”
“Here is a new task for controversy mapping”
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Preface: The politics of association on display by Richard Rogers
Introduction
Begin Reading
Controversy mapping in the shadow of Gaia
A conversation with Bruno Latour
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Preface: The politics of association on display by Richard Rogers
Figure 0
Mapping the online mentions of rare minerals
Introduction
Figure 1
Tree of disagreements around the conservation of Amboseli elephants
Figure 2
Actor/issue table of the Amboseli controversy
Figure 3
Network of actors in the Amboseli controversy
Figure 4
Debate scales and scale inversion in the Amboseli controversy
Figure 5
Stream diagram of the temporal evolution of the Amboseli controversy
Chapter 1
Figure 6
Map of how three different indexes of vulnerability disagree in assessing countr…
Figure 7
Bilateral adaptation funding and vulnerability indexing
Figure 8
Controversy mappers accused of spying on wind turbine opponents
Figure 9
Four criteria for estimating the feasibility of a controversy mapping project
Figure 10
The hype cycle of controversy mapping
Chapter 2
Figure 11
First attempt at inventorying the issues surrounding the plans for developing th…
Figure 12
1934 map of Southern Copenhagen circulated by the developer as part of the debat…
Figure 13
Map of the area where the development is planned showing the concentration of un…
Figure 14
Map demonstrating that the construction site is on the site of the old landfill
Figure 15
Two of the photos showing how in 2001 the meadows were almost completely strippe…
Figure 16
Map of the area showing the location of the red-listed species and the planned d…
Chapter 3
Figure 17
Screenshot of a post on the Friends of the Common Facebook group with the three …
Figure 18
Artistic rendition of the proposed artificial island “Nordhaleøen”
Figure 19
Area chart showing the shifting prevalence of different issues in the Friends of…
Figure 20
“Angry” and “love” reactions to posts and comments in the Friends of the Common…
Figure 21
Facebook posts from the Friends of the Common group, and from the pages for the …
Figure 22
Banksy, Love Is in The Air, Flower Thrower, 2005
Chapter 4
Figure 23
Elements of a terroir, as told by Jean-Marie around his vineyards in Berlou
Figure 24
Extract from the official map of the Languedoc AOCs
Figure 25
Trained vines with irrigation system on the plains near Béziers and troll vines on…
Figure 26
Cellar floor, fermentation tanks, and the dog named Terroir in Béziers; cellar f…
Figure 27
A semiotic triangle of French wine oppositions
Figure 28
Three ways of telling the story of French wine and terroir using Greimas’s model …
Figure 29
A diagram of programs and anti-programs of action in a hotel reception
Figure 30
Markings on a street encouraging social distancing in front of a rotisserie kios…
Figure 31
The trajectory of the TSR2 project
Figure 32
The redirection of actions through the obligatory passage point (OPP) proposed b…
Figure 33
The Centre Pompidou in Paris
Figure 34a
Network of actors cast for HBO series visualized by separating actors and series
Figure 34b
Network of actors cast for HBO series visualized by keeping actors and series on…
Figure 35a
Luc Boltanski’s original table of the French dominant class
Figure 35b
A redesign of figure 35a as a network with institutions and individuals connecte…
Figure 36
Hope by Shepard Fairey (2008) courtesy of Obey Giant, flanked by the original ph…
Chapter 5
Figure 37
South Korean search interest in the topics “Coronavirus,” “Mask,” and “Vaccines”…
Figure 38
German search interest in the topics “Coronavirus,” “Mask,” and “Vaccines” overl…
Figure 39
German search interest in the topics “Zoom Video Communications,” “Toilet Paper,…
Figure 40
Search topics related to the topic “Coronavirus” in Germany between February 19 …
Figure 41
The divide between qualitative and quantitative methods as revealed by a visual …
Figure 42
The three generations of social sciences
Figure 43
The power-law distribution of online attention and the popularity and personaliz…
Chapter 6
Figure 44
The research chain of digital methods and how it will be covered in the followin…
Figure 45
Thirteen pages discovered by crawling the “Circumcision controversies” page on W…
Figure 46
Network obtained by crawling the “Circumcision controversies” page on Wikipedia …
Figure 47
Network obtained by crawling the “Circumcision controversies” page on Wikipedia …
Figure 48
Network of pages from the “Circumcision” category on Wikipedia connected by all …
Figure 49
An example of a link template from Wikipedia
Figure 50
Network of pages from the “Circumcision” category on Wikipedia connected to each…
Figure 51
Network of pages from the “Circumcision” category on Wikipedia connected by the …
Figure 52
Three versions of the same network of pages from the “Circumcision” category on …
Figure 53a
Apparent correlation between queries for “side effects” and the unemployment rat…
Figure 53b
The similarity of trends in Google Trends for the queries “symptoms,” “side effe…
Figure 54
An example of a sophisticated search query in ISI Web of Science
Figure 55
The Palestinian Blogosphere as crawled by Anat Ben-David in 2007
Figure 56
The three-layered model of online connectivity and the three-step crawling prot…
Figure 57
Network shortcuts and the formation of small worlds in clustered networks
Figure 58
Normal distribution of connectivity in the US highway system; and the power-law …
Chapter 7
Figure 59
HPV vaccination activity in Denmark month by month from 2009 to 2016, Danish med…
Figure 60
Mentions of “side effect” in Danish Facebook conversations related to the HPV va…
Figure 61
Network of Facebook posts mentioning both “HPV” and “side effects” from 2012 to …
Figure 62
Two renderings of a network of Wikipedia pages related to the Green Revolution
Figure 63
Central and bridging nodes in the Green Revolution network
Figure 64
Authorities and hubs in the Green Revolution network
Figure 65
The Green Revolution network according to our manual thematic classification of …
Figure 66
Turning the city of Königsberg and its bridges into a matrix of associations
Figure 67
Headline, subhead and lead of Moreno’s 1933 New York Times interview; Jacob More…
Figure 68a
The London Underground map before Harry Beck’s redesign
Figure 68b
The London Underground map after Harry Beck’s redesign
Chapter 8
Figure 69
Network of scientific literature related to “AI for humanity” visualized as a contour map
Figure 70
Setup for the presentation of our scientometric maps at the “Global Forum for Ar…
Figure 71
The same network of scientific literature related to “AI for humanity” as seen f…
Figure 72
The same network of scientific literature related to “AI for humanity” as seen f…
Figure 73
Negotiations in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1995–…
Figure 74
Rise and fall in the visibility of issues in the international climate negotiati…
Figure 75
The level of intervention of the 21 most active countries in the UNFCCC negotiat…
Figure 76
Two unsatisfactory maps: too complex and too simplified
Figure 77
The controversy atlas as a way to manage the trade-off between the richness that…
Figure 78
An example of a tree of disagreements (reproduced from figure 1)
Figure 79
An example of an actor/issue table (reproduced from figure 2)
Figure 80
An example of a network diagram (reproduced from figure 3)
Figure 81
An example of debate scales (reproduced from figure 4)
Figure 82
An example of debate dynamics (reproduced from figure 5)
Figure 83
Ten types of evolution in the complexity of a controversy over time
Figure 84
The narration-exploration circle of controversy mapping
Figure 85
Datascape navigation on lafabriquedelaloi.fr
Figure 86a
Recipe for tracing the fate of a fake news story online: the digital methods pro…
Figure 86b
Recipe for tracing the fate of a fake news story online: the resulting visualiza…
Chapter 9
Figure 87
The spiral of public participation
Controversy mapping in the shadow of Gaia
Figure 88
The planet Melancholia crashing into the Earth in the 2011 movie by Lars von Tri…
Figure 89
Lynn Margulis carving a sample from the cyanobacteria tissue responsible for the…
Figure 90
Two of the first and most famous pictures of the Earth seen from space, Earthris…
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Dedication
To our teachers and our students
Controversy Mapping
A Field Guide
Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk
polity
Copyright © Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk 2022
The right of Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2022 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4452-3
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Venturini, Tommaso, author. | Munk, Anders Kristian, 1980- author.Title: Controversy mapping : a field guide / Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk.Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA, USA : Polity, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The first student-friendly textbook on the exciting field of controversy mapping” -- Provided by publisher.Identifiers: LCCN 2021003318 (print) | LCCN 2021003319 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509544509 | ISBN 9781509544516 (pb) | ISBN 9781509544523 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Controversy mapping. | Sociology--Graphic methods. | Social conflict--Data processing.Classification: LCC HM1112 .V46 2021 (print) | LCC HM1112 (ebook) | DDC 303.4-dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003318LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003319
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Acknowledgments
It was in Paris, in the fall of 2013, that Tommaso first suggested the idea for this book. Anders had begun a two-year stint as a visiting researcher at the Sciences Po médialab, where Tommaso was the research coordinator, and we had both been teaching controversy mapping for some years. At the time, no explicit guidance was available and the pedagogy of controversy mapping was learned by trying, possibly through apprenticeship with colleagues ahead of the curve. The atmosphere was playful and experimental with a high level of engagement and substantial contributions from the students, yet the need was felt to compile the teaching resources that we were all working on into more structured formats.
Several initiatives were taken in those years to consolidate the ongoing experiments with controversy mapping. One was the curation of a collection of websites that students around the world were producing as part of their coursework, another was the FORCCAST project (FORmation par la Cartographie des Controverses à l’Analyse des Sciences et des Techniques) which had been launched in France to establish a research-based understanding of the pedagogy of controversy mapping. What was missing, we thought, was a book. Tommaso had compiled his teaching materials into a portfolio which became the first draft for a manuscript that has since developed and transformed through more iterations than we would care to think of. We are proud to see it emerge now as a fully-fledged field guide to controversy mapping, not just for teaching, but also for research and democratic inquiry. This would not have been possible without the help and support of an ever-expanding and highly committed network of fellow controversy mappers that we want to credit and thank.
Controversy mapping has existed as a pedagogic practice in Science and Technology Studies (STS) since the early 1990s, and Bruno Latour has played a pivotal role all the way from its inception at a time when mapping projects were still handed in on paper through to its later digital adaptations. He is also the reason why the authors of this book first met and we can safely say that it would not have been written without him. We first got in touch more than a decade ago while working at different ends of Bruno’s MACOSPOL project (MApping COntroversies in Science for POLitics – the first large-scale research project dedicated to the approach). Anders was teaching controversy mapping on the MSc program in Nature, Society, and Environmental Politics at the University of Oxford, which was one of five test beds, while Tommaso was working on the digital part of the project and himself teaching controversy mapping at SciencesPo (the three remaining test beds were MIT, the EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and the École des Mines). From that early collaboration we were able to take inspiration from the vanguard of controversy analysis in STS, including Andrew Barry, Sarah Whatmore, Valerie November, Albena Yaneva, who went on to write the first book on controversy mapping in architecture (Yaneva, 2011), and not least Noortje Marres, who was already a leading figure in digital methods and has since published a seminal book on digital sociology (Marres, 2017) and established one of the key research groups in the field at the University of Warwick.
Noortje’s role is particularly interesting because she embodies the crosspollination that went on in the early 2000s between Richard Rogers and his Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) in Amsterdam, and Bruno Latour and his STS group in Paris. As a doctoral student in both places, her work was the first real example of what could happen at the interface between actor-network theory and new digital methods for studying issues online. As junior researchers at the time, we took inspiration from her example. Indeed, digital methods would be as impossible to imagine without Richard and Noortje as controversy mapping would be without Bruno. Richard’s books on digital methods are already classics (Rogers, 2013a, 2019). The summer and winter schools convened by his team in Amsterdam (Esther Weltevrede, Liliana Bounegru, Natalia Sanchez Querubin, Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, Fernando van der Vlist, Sabine Niederer, Marc Tuters, to name a few) have become the go-to place for a generation of young social cartographers. Arguably, the game-changing role of the DMI came about through its early focus on toolmaking. Building research instruments to repurpose digital records and reflecting on the implication of such an operation, people like Erik Borra and Bernhard Rieder have enabled controversy mappers to develop their craft in critical proximity to its more technical sides. This cannot be acknowledged enough and deserves far more credit than is typically allotted.
A similar story can be told about the Sciences Po médialab which was, when we first met, coming into its own as a hub for digital methods toolmaking. Bruno had made it a precondition for his move from the École des Mines to Sciences Po Paris that he could set up a lab with research engineers capable of developing new tools for quali-quantitative research. Many of these engineers came from Franck Ghitalla’s group at the University of Compiègne and brought with them a focus on visual network analysis. Mathieu Jacomy, in particular, has become a very close collaborator and an invaluable sparring partner for both of us. He was also the initiator of the Gephi software which has become synonymous with visual network exploration for everyone in digital methods and quite a few people beyond. In general, the importance of the médialab for our formation as controversy mappers cannot be overstated, to a large extent thanks to the unique atmosphere created by and around toolmakers like Paul Girard, Benjamin Ooghe-Tabanou, Daniele Guido, Guillaume Plique, Alexis Jacomy, Audrey Banneyx, and Jean-Philippe Cointet.
After MACOSPOL came a period of expansion. Anders went back to Copenhagen to set up the first Danish controversy mapping course with Torben Elgaard Jensen at the Danish Technical University. That same year, in 2010, Anders Blok, Martin Skrydstrup, and Ayo Wahlberg started a similar course at the University of Copenhagen, followed a couple of years later by a course at the Danish IT University run by Britt Ross Winthereik and Michael Hockenhull, and a course in Aarhus run by Peter Danholt and Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen. There was now a basis for a local Danish research environment centered around controversy mapping teaching, which resulted in the now obsolete server community Copenhagen Association for Digital Methods. We were both involved, together with Torben Elgaard Jensen and Mathieu Jacomy, when Mark Elam and Åsa Mäkitalo began an ambitious project to teach STS through controversy mapping in high schools in Gothenburg. A similar idea was pursued by the FORCCAST project under the direction of Dominique Boullier, and later of Nicolas Benvegnu and Thomas Tari, in collaboration with researchers from the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, the École de Mines, Télécom ParisTech and the Institutes of Complex Systems of the Île de France and Rhône-Alpes regions. In the same years, Tommaso was giving seminars on controversy mapping at the Politecnico di Milano and at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro with Fernanda Bruno and the team at her lab. As the network grew larger, so did the sense that we needed to write a book.
At the médialab, Tommaso had been working with Axel Meunier to develop the successor project to MACOSPOL. When EMAPS (Electronic Maps to Assist Public Science) received funding, it was an opportunity to not only teach controversy mapping but also to develop it as a proper research method and assess its ability to make a difference in the world beyond the classroom. Anders moved to Paris and for two years we were both working with Axel and many of the people mentioned above to show that we could map the controversy on climate adaptation in ways that actually mattered to its protagonists. EMAPS foregrounded the key role of data visualization in controversy mapping projects and cemented a burgeoning collaboration with the information designers at the Density Design lab in Milan. Today, it would be hard to imagine controversy mapping without a strong visual component and the contributions of people like Donato Ricci, Daniele Guido, Michele Mauri, Angeles Briones, Paolo Ciuccarelli, and their many dedicated students. Indeed, Federica Bardelli, to whom we owe immense gratitude as the designer of the illustrations in this book, is herself a product of Density Design and embodies the difference that the Milan crowd continues to make to the practice of controversy mapping.
When EMAPS ended in 2015, many of us took up new positions. Tommaso went first to the Digital Humanities Department of King’s College London to work with Tobias Blanke, Marc Coté, and Jennifer Pybus, and then to Lyon to collaborate with Pablo Jensen and further develop the technique of visual network analysis. Anders went back to Copenhagen to establish the Techno-Anthropology Lab together with Anders Koed Madsen, Andreas Birkbak, Torben Elgaard Jensen, and Morten Krogh Petersen. The group there, which was later joined by Mathieu Jacomy, Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, and Asger Gehrt Olesen, has provided an intellectual home base for much of the writing process. Together with the prodigious organizational talents of Jonathan Gray and Liliana Bounegru, Tommaso devised the concept for the Public Data Lab which now convenes much of the old EMAPS group and a whole bunch of great new acquaintances in a fantastically engaging and interest-driven network, the activities of which have been another key intellectual anchor point and a place to spar on drafts and ideas throughout the past five years.
Some people have not found their way into the above narrative despite contributing ideas, providing feedback and in general being part of an ongoing conversation about controversy mapping: Kari De Pryck, David Moats, Nicolas Baya-Laffite, Francesca Musiani, Timothée Collignon, Ian Gray, Niranjan Sivakumar, Trevor Pinch, Thomas Turnbull, Vincent Lépinay, Oscar Coromina, Oscar Maldonado, Liam Heaphy, Massimiano Bucchi, Federico Neresini, Andrea Lorenzet, David Chavalarias, Eric Fleury, Marc Barbier, Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen, Tobias Bornakke, Jean-Paul Vanderlinden, Vivian Depoues, Didier Bigo, François Gemenne, and, not least, all our amazing students.
A special thanks goes to Marcella, Gilberto, Birgitte, and Ebbe, who taught us to be curious about complex things. And an even more special thanks to those who have been forced to witness the slow birth of the book up close, dealing with fallouts and frustrations, and doing their best to share our enthusiasm for a project that at times seemed never-ending: Kari, Mateo, Anne-Kirstine, and Gustav, who have patiently observed the entire writing process from the sideline, and Bertha, who was born into it. The manuscript was revised on a permanently open conference call while we were all working from home during the long months of COVID-induced lockdown in 2020. Only your indulgence made that possible.
We would also like to thank our editors at Polity Press, Stephanie Homer, Ellen MacDonald-Kramer, and Mary Savigar, as well as the anonymous reviewers for taking this on, seeing it through, and making it so much better along the way. Thanks to Ian Tuttle, who revised the proofs of the book and corrected many of our mistakes. We are grateful to Giulia Marelli (Arnalda Gourmet), Gruppo Food, Craig Robinson, Nikolaos Askitas, Klaus Zimmermann, Vincent Traag, Thomas Franssen, Duncan Watts, Steven Strogatz, Albert-Laszlo Barabási, Michel Callon, URBAN POWER, Lendager Group, John M. Eriksen, Ole Malling, Camilla Hiul Suppli, Niels Dalum Hansen, Mette Rasmussen, Palle Valentiner-Branth, Tyra Grove Krause, and Kåre Mølbak for giving us the permission to reproduce the images in this field guide.
And we would like to thank the institutions who have financially supported our work with the book: the Carlsberg Foundation, the Department of Learning & Culture at the University of Aalborg, Sciences Po Paris, the Digital Humanities Department of King’s College London, INRIA, and the CNRS.
Finally, there is one person whose contribution warrants its own section, namely Michael Flower, who has meticulously read and reread many consecutive versions of the manuscript, and provided not only constructive commentary and critique but incessant and unyielding support. Thanks, Michael: your encouragement has meant a lot to us.
Preface: The politics of association on display
Richard Rogers
As this book aptly demonstrates, there is a certain fit between Actor-Network Theory (ANT), controversy mapping, and digital methods. From the outset, digital methods were informed by ANT and sought to operationalize controversy mapping, for the purpose of investigating imbroglios such as the ones described in the book. They did so in at least three ways: putting actor association on display through link mapping, furnishing a coarse view of actor partisanship through mention mapping, and inserting the maps into the issue space, as they are part of it rather than only representations.
As Venturini and Munk discuss, associations are the main focus of ANT and the prime way in which controversies are fought and societal arrangements established. In order to put actor association on display, colleagues and I would capture how websites link to one another. Long before the industrialization, automation, and eventual decline of the hyperlink (in favor of the “like,” the “follower,” and very differently the “hashtag”), each link was hand-made by a webmaster, with particular proclivities or even policies. Linking was thus noncapricious and selective. Hyperlinking practices thus reminded us of the way in which scientists use references to mark their positioning in the academic field, but we extended these associational practices to a much larger and more diverse number of actors.
Once mapped, these links could be telling. One could profile and also typify the players in a public dispute beyond their usual roles, as outlined in the chapter about controversy actors. They could be profiled through the manner in which they linked and were linked to. Who does the actor link to? Why does the actor receive those particular inlinks? Which links could be regarded as conspicuously missing?
We found certain types and styles of association. There were aspirational links, with actors desiring association with another actor, often without reciprocation. There was cordial linking, where actors link to their affiliates and colleagues in the same space. There was critical linking, with actors pointing to culprits or addressees of an issue or problem. There were other types and styles, too, such as non-linking, self-linking, kinship linking, transdiscursive linking, and so forth.
Like Google, we also discovered that the sum of one’s inlinks is worth investigating, for it could be deployed as a reputational marker. But it also could deliver signs of where an actor’s sympathies lie. We wanted to enable the study of the politics of association, which, as argued over and again in this field guide, is a key task in controversy mapping.
Links may show alignments. They may reveal the company an actor keeps, or unlikely bedfellows. Particularly when displayed through the techniques described in the sections on visual network analysis, the investigation of links could indicate actor standing. There are hierarchies in networks, and links furnish certain actors with prominence and centrality. “Orphan” websites, without inlinks, did not make it onto the maps, however, so non-association would require another technique (such as mentions mapping, discussed below).
More broadly, these webs of actor links, in other words, were considered networks. Linking actively brings networks into being. They create a space of interaction and circulation, the “magmatic” space of alliances and oppositions described in the book. They each may be characterized by the material they circulate and the activity they display. Rather than structural, such as “old boy networks,” we found them to be dynamic, and continually in need of glue. These networks, we thought, were held together by what they principally circulate. Debate networks circulate positions, scandal networks accusations, issue networks urgency, summit networks announcements, and protest networks mobilization.
The rates at which these networks circulate the material, through the updating of their websites, could be considered a measure of dedication or care. The “health” or hardiness of the issue, protest, and so forth could be monitored. In order to do so, the maps went live.
We would build issue tickers and other displays to show an issue’s current state. In one example, we monitored NGO campaigning behavior, and when NGOs would leave an issue, in the sense of ceasing its advocacy, the issue’s state would decline. One could similarly monitor a controversy, and when it is the hottest, or in full motion, that is the occasion to map and chart it.
Second, we mapped mentions. In order to capture an actor’s partisanship or issue commitment, we learn from how actors mention each other as well as each other’s issue language. It is an issue mapping exercise, where, for example, we asked, which actors in the climate change space mention the skeptics? Here the idea is to gain a rough indication of skeptic-friendly sources. (Sources skeptical of the skeptics also appear, so close reading and annotation are essential.)
Querying search engines, and interpreting actor mentions, are not particularly slow methods, but they are not single-click operations either. Their exploitation demands a reflexive attitude, including the many methodological considerations laid out in the chapter on the collection and sorting of digital records. Research browsers are installed, settings are changed, and multiple queries are made as one reconsiders the use of search engines, transforming them from a consumer information appliance into a research device.
We considered the placement of the mentions. This is the study of what is referred to as “source distance.” How far from the top are the mentions? It is also a consideration of the significance of the actors who can be seen to sympathize or align with them.
In order to produce a coarse measure of partisanship among significant actors in an issue space, the search engine is queried, but in two steps, first, for the issue, “climate change.” The second set of queries is made for the names of skeptics or skeptical organizations in each source returned in step one. This is the point where the search engine has been repurposed for research.
We note a source’s affinity toward an actor, but we also would like to draw comparisons between the actors. Who appears to be the most sympathetic? There is a word-clouding technique, where one keeps the order of the sources returned and resizes the actor names according to the number of mentions of the other. One can have clouds (which also could be called maps) that show the results of an analysis of a single actor or a constellation of many, for example, which actors mention a set of skeptics. One can also show the most significant skeptic.
Networks also could be said to have an agenda or a set of commitments. Certain issues may be suffering, others thriving. If one demarcates a network through hyperlink analysis, relying on an authoritative list or surveying actors or funders, one can harvest each actor’s online issue list, merge the lists, and query every actor for every issue (in our repurposed search engine). The resulting “issue cloud,” whether in alphabetical order or arrayed by mention frequency, provides both the network’s overall agenda as well as the distribution of commitment. Are children’s rights doing well within the global human rights issue network? Who’s particularly dedicated to it, and who is much less so? Claimed commitments also may be tested. An organization may have a beefy issue list but pay attention to a few over the others listed.
Third, the maps have effects. As this field guide makes clear from the outset, to be a mapmaker is to assume some form of complicity. Link maps could make actors desirous of others’ sets of inlinks. They may be envious of another actor’s positioning either overall or within a particular cluster. Having viewed the maps, actors might begin to solicit links. They could consider employing the services of a link farm, just as celebrities and others purchase likes or followers to enhance their social media status. Sudden movement around the map could capture actor link optimization, or could be a sign of improved showing, however gained. Mapping becomes temporal, with a series of scheduled snapshots.
But the maps are themselves part of the issue space, certainly when actors incorporate them into their PowerPoint presentations. Just like the geographical maps discussed in the chapter on the representation of controversies, debate maps are not neutral descriptions of a territory, but instruments in the hands of social actors. In one project, working in a data sprint similar to the ones described in this book, we collaborated with FairPhone, the project originated at the Waag Society, Amsterdam, to create a “more sustainable smartphone.” They had a map, or diagram, that shows the stages of life of a smartphone that emphasizes the mining and recovery of minerals. In their presentations they raise awareness of the mineral trade, also discussing “conflict minerals.” They argue that there is scant information available about those raw materials in the various phases of a smartphone’s life from production, sale, and use to recycling. With mineral mention mapping, we annotated their map by adding an awareness layer (see figure 0). It could be inserted into the PowerPoint presentation, after the original stages of life diagram. It empirically hardens the point made by FairPhone, but also indicates some signs of awareness, perhaps from their own dedicated efforts (though we did not test that supposition).
Finally, there are a number of precepts that the mapping of issues and networks with digital methods have followed that are decidedly Latourian (apart from having precepts in the first place): multiply the maps, instead of seeking to make the mother map and have it serve as the endpoint. Multiple map-making is the research that precedes and enables making findings or developing a narrative of the results. Make the maps reversible, so one can follow content or data points back to their origins. These key precepts of “second-degree objectivity” and “datascape navigation” (described in the chapter on representation) were imported from ANT into digital methods. A recent digital methods tool, 4CAT, for collecting and analyzing 4Chan, Reddit, TikTok, Telegram, and Instagram data, not only queries the social media platforms (or archives of them), but also saves each analytical sub-operation per map. In that sense it allows for the deconstruction of the map. The last precept to be mentioned is the retention and study of actor issue language. While the respect for actor accounts is anthropological in its origins (as argued in the chapter about actor-networks), the issue language also serves as queries. A preferred technique, among the many introduced over the years on collecting and sorting digital records, is to compare the resonance (together with its publics) of competing issue languages, also known as programs and antiprograms, which are like campaigns but without the outward campaigning.
While digital methods have learned from ANT and controversy mapping, this book represents a deepening and maturing of the relationship. It also demonstrates the refinement of many of the techniques that were at the heart of the first wave of web research, described above, when issue crawlers and Google scrapers were routinely deployed for mapping. Welcome to the new wave.
Richard Rogers
Figure 0 Mapping the online mentions of rare minerals (created by Richard Rogers and Federica Bardelli).
Introduction
Controversies, it seems, are everywhere in contemporary media. It is impossible to check the news, scroll through one’s social feed, or listen to a podcast without stumbling on some controversial issue.
Sunday, it is the snapshot of a seahorse gripping a cotton-bud in its curvy tail, reigniting the debate about the effects of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems and declining biodiversity. Published by an American photographer and environmental activist, the image goes viral on social media and soon gives rise to all sorts of parodies and memes.
Monday, the havoc caused by a tropical cyclone adds fuel to a discussion about the connection between climate change and extreme weather events. TV and radio shows suddenly take an interest in climatologists who can explain how warmer oceans can lead to increased storm activity. Once on air, the discussion quickly drifts from causes to consequences, as architects and engineers suggest the destruction should be blamed on poor urban planning and not on the weather. They subsequently accuse the government of not fulfilling its commitments to adapt to climate change.
Tuesday, the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization is met with a vast street protest against the adverse consequences of economic globalization in perpetuating poverty in the Global South. The demonstration takes authorities by surprise. The activists have organized for months through an encrypted messaging system and use social media to create improvised flash mobs in various parts of the city.
Wednesday, a group of endocrinologists and environmental scientists publish an open letter in a prestigious international journal urging governments to take action against a series of commonly used chemicals in agriculture and cosmetics that are accused of being carcinogenic and causing hormonal disorders. The scientists criticize the lack of regulation, but also a media campaign by industrial lobbyists trying to promote a false sense of scientific uncertainty around the effects of these substances.
Thursday, the CEO of an online platform is called to testify before Congress about a massive data leak exposing millions of its users and their personal information to fraudulent marketing schemes and deceptive political campaigns. Discussions ensue about the exceptionality of the situation, as media scholars note that selling personal data for targeted advertising is a standard business model of online platforms. A group of activist-developers seizes the opportunity to launch a peer-to-peer social network where users own their data.
Friday, a forgotten rural town makes the headlines of national newspapers after a confrontation over the construction of a new wind farm. Two unusual coalitions face each other. On the one side, inhabitants worried about noise levels, spoiled views and decreased land value, as well as a group of ecologists protesting the location of large turbines in the path of a major bird migration route. On the other side, the municipal developers, representatives of the wind industry, and another group of ecologists supporting the transition to renewable energy.
Saturday, a boat with African migrants is refused the right to dock at a Mediterranean port and a legal battle breaks out between activists who accuse the state of disregarding the Law of the Sea and basic human rights, and the state accuses the activists of aiding and encouraging illegal migration. A quarrel also arises on the publication of the photos of the overcrowded boat. Some argue that the pictures sensitize the public to the struggles of migrants; others that they promote a sense of siege in the population of affluent countries, thus supporting the discourse of populist and nationalist parties.
Controversies between technoscience and mediatized democracy
Like most of the controversies that constitute our daily media diet, the examples above have two things in common. First, in one way or another, they are all related to science and technology – including, of course, the humanities, social sciences, economics and law. They are prompted by the unintended consequences of some new invention, a technical failure, an unforeseen natural hazard, or a disagreement between purported experts. Second, all these controversies are, to some extent, public. While they may play out partly in private, or behind closed doors in engineering offices or scientific laboratories, they are also staged in and by the media and are thus open for everyone to see and engage with. These sociotechnical controversies – debates that relate to science and technology and that take place in public rather than behind closed doors – constitute the object of this book.
Controversies, where facts, expertise or new technologies are contested, have been pushed to the center of our collective attention by two overlapping developments. First, they have become more salient because science and technology play an increasingly important role in our politics (Weingart, 1999; Marres, 2005b). Since the Scientific Revolution, it has been commonplace to believe that technoscience would gradually remove dangers, manage insecurities, and resolve conflicts. Yet, after five centuries of technoscientific progress, we are every bit as entangled in controversies as we have always been. Far from imposing consensus, science and technology have become the breeding grounds of many of our collective disputes. Even when born outside industry or academia, controversies almost invariably involve questions about technical infrastructures and expert knowledge. Essentially political questions, such as the 2016 Brexit referendum, are still deeply entangled with expert discussions about economic indicators, legal rules, voting systems, and even voting machines. As this field guide will exemplify over and over again, there is no outside of modern science and technology.
While many controversies stem from the failures of modern technoscientific systems, many more come from their success. While extending our control and understanding of social and natural phenomena, science and technology have also produced a wide variety of aftereffects that are increasingly impossible to ignore. These risks and externalities are not new and have been a matter of discussion since the first industrial revolution. Yet, technoscientific networks have grown so deep and wide (Ellul, 1967) that their collateral effects now result in existential crises (Mumford, 1944, 1971) and hazards to the planet (Latour, 2004b, 2017b). Because there is no outside of modern science and technology, there is also no escape from dealing with their consequences. We cannot board a plane without being reminded about our carbon footprint or the risk of moving some virus from one continent to the other; dispose of a “disposable” cup without seeing it floating back to us in an oceanic garbage patch; buy a dress without affecting the economy of some distant country; or cook a meal without considering the planetary consequences of the menu. Nothing is out of bounds or off grid. By extending our reach, the very success of science and technology has made our collective actions more momentous and entwined with that of an expanding cast of recalcitrant others (Castells, 1996; Anderson, 2002; Bauman, 2006).
The second reason why controversies about science and technology have become more visible is the transformation of our infrastructures for public debate. Depending on how you count, technoscientific controversies are as old as the Industrial Revolution (Hobsbawm, 1952) or as technology tout court (Leroi-Gourhan, 1943, 1964). What is new is the way in which modern media encourage and enable a growing variety of actors to take part in them (Lippmann, 1927; Dewey, 1946). The myth of the scholar perched in an “ivory tower,” indifferent to the noise of the world, has always been false but it has become laughable as scientists and engineers are now routinely receiving media training. Likewise, political actors have always mobilized or criticized science and technology to suit their agendas, but in recent years the mediatization of expert disagreements has become a favorite political weapon as industrial lobbies have learned to amplify scientific uncertainty as a way to stall political action (Proctor & Schiebinger, 2008; Oreskes & Conway, 2010).
More recently, sociotechnical controversies have become even more conspicuous because of the amplification, fragmentation, and acceleration of media debates brought about by the advent of social platforms. Challenging the gatekeeping function of broadcast journalism (Manning White, 1950; Shoemaker & Vos, 2009), online media have allowed more people to join the public conversation, making it more democratic, but also more complex and easier to manipulate (Benkler, 2006; Benkler et al., 2018). In the case of science and technology, this transformation is all the more profound as the challenge to news monopolies has been accompanied by a challenge to knowledge monopolies (Lynch, 2017). The contestation of expert authority and the proposal of alternative knowledge systems has become so visible that some have suggested we have entered a “post-truth” era (Keyes, 2004; Sismondo, 2017). At the same time, the rise of filtering and recommendation algorithms facilitate a selective exposure to ideas close to our point of view (Sears & Freedman, 1967), raising questions about the fragmentation of public discourse (Sunstein, 2001; Pariser, 2011) and the risk of political radicalization (Gerstenfeld et al., 2003). Finally, and maybe most importantly, the increasing competition for attention has accelerated the news cycle (Downs, 1972; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988; Leskovec et al., 2009a) forcing us to consider a growing number of issues in a shrinking span of time (Venturini, 2019a). The prophecy of Walter Lippmann, one of the fathers of modern journalism, has come true: the modern citizen is “tantalized too often by the foam of events” (1927, p. 5) or, more prosaically, “bewildered as a puppy trying to lick three bones at once” (p. 14).
This overload of issues also explains why conflict has become a favorite genre of modern media. Already in the 1970s, Herbert Simon noted that “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients” (Simon, 1971, p. 40). Attention (and not information) is therefore the scarce resource whose pursuit increasingly drives the media market and consequently the public debate (Goldhaber, 1997; Crogan & Kinsley, 2012; Terranova, 2012; Citton, 2014). Equally important are the vanishing boundaries that used to separate news from entertainment (Prior, 2005). The convergence of all types of communication in the same digital devices and platforms means that public debates are nowadays in direct competition with all other kinds of online content, “an all-out war for the time of an audience that has more choices than at any point in history” (Klein, 2020, p. 279).
In this ruthless fight for public attention, controversies have a competitive advantage. Because they promote high-activation feelings (Feldman Barrett & Russell, 1998; Clore & Storbeck, 2014), they are very effective in capturing attention and are more likely to be passed along in online networks (Berger & Milkman, 2012; Guadagno et al., 2013). As the alt-right’s slogan goes: “conflict is attention and attention is influence” (Marantz, 2019). This practice of using controversy to hijack the media agenda poses a real challenge for controversy mappers, whose cartographic efforts can offer the “oxygen of amplification” (Phillips, 2016) to actors who fuel controversies with the exclusive goal of enhancing their own visibility.
For better or worse, these techno-environmental crises and media evolutions have made controversies increasingly prominent. Ignoring them is no longer an option, but neither is fueling them by sharing them on social media in a burst of outrage or virtue signaling. Instead, we have to learn to patiently unravel their imbroglios and distribute their charges.
Controversy mapping between Actor-Network Theory and digital methods
As ubiquitous as they may be, controversies can be hard to appreciate and take seriously. The desire to avoid them or write them off as irrelevant or malignant increases the appeal of simplifying discourses and populist policies, promoting draconian and even authoritarian solutions (Latour, 2017a). Down with the experts and their subtleties! Down with public debate and its scandals! Lacking the tools and resources to sort properly through our collective disagreements, it is hard to resist the temptation for simple solutions to complicated problems (Zizek, 2008).
This book is a call against that temptation. It is a call to give controversies a chance; an invitation to resist the urge to slash the knots that tie our actions to their multiple consequences and begin caring for them instead. This does not mean sanctifying all controversies, but rather learning to distinguish the conflicts that are nothing but attempts to manipulate public attention from the ones that concern sociotechnical arrangements vital to our collective life.
This effort to unfold public debate, to care for all viewpoints while not giving everyone the same credit, to explore collective disputes and make them more legible, is a form of mapmaking, although not (or not only) in a geographical or even a graphical sense. While information visualization (Klanten & Van Heerden, 2009; Cairo, 2012, Yau, 2012) plays an important role in controversy mapping, the representation we are talking about is not only visual. Rather, the objective of controversy mapping is to unfold sociotechnical disputes in a conceptual space where its multiple actors and issues can be weighed against each other. To equip this type of civic mapmaking with a conceptual and methodological toolbox, we draw on two traditions of social research, namely Actor-Network Theory and Digital Methods.
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is a methodological tradition in the social study of science and technology founded in the 1980s by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, John Law and others. From an ANT perspective, the first step in understanding sociotechnical debates is to not write them off as deviations; mistakes deriving from human irrationality or from a simple shift in the balance of power. Rather, to understand controversies, we must suspend our a priori judgment and resist both realist and relativist conceptions of truth and power.
Philosophical realism is the assumption that the truth is “out there” waiting to be uncovered. It entails a conviction that, as our knowledge of the world extends, so does our capacity to settle controversies. This conception is as old as modern science and resonates across the centuries in the famous motto of Gottfried Leibniz: “Calculemus!” – no need for vain discussions, consensus shall follow once the problem has been rationally figured out.
Relativism, on the other hand, assumes truth to be nothing more than what is accepted at a given point in time. No matter whether such consensus is reached by persuasion or imposition: if all truths are alike, then there is no point in considering the arguments of your opponents (let alone to change your mind). If there is no truth, then there is also no point debating it.
Though diametric opposites, both positions (simplified here for the sake of argument) belittle the relevance of controversies involving science and technology as an object of public inquiry. From a purebred realist viewpoint, controversies are hallmarks of human imperfection, the constant reminder that our knowledge is flawed. Conversely, from a die-hard relativist position, controversies are mere symptoms of a transformation in the balance of forces, a sign that an emergent faction has acquired the strength to challenge the status quo. Neither realists nor relativists have reason to consider controversies as valuable in their own right.
To elude both realism and relativism, controversy mapping relies on the idea that truth and power are built together. As Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer explain in their book on the birth of the scientific method: “solutions to the problem of knowledge are embedded within practical solutions to the problem of social order, and different practical solutions to the problem of social order encapsulate contrasting practical solutions to the problem of knowledge” (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985, p. 15). Sheila Jasanoff calls this entanglement the “co-production of science and the social order” (2004). To unravel this co-construction, ANT draws on a series of discussions that occupied the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. These discussions provide the theoretical backbone for controversy mapping and hence for many of the chapters in this book. For readers who would like to delve deeper into the history of controversy analysis in STS, our conversation with Bruno Latour in the postscript offers some context. Trevor Pinch also provides an excellent introduction in a chapter for the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Pinch, 2015; see also Pinch & Leuenberger, 2006). Other accounts are available in the edited volume by Thomas Brante, Steve Fuller and William Lynch on Controversial Science: From Content to Contention (Brante et al., 1993) and in Dominique Pestre’s Introduction aux Science Studies (Pestre, 2006). Finally, Sheila Jasanoff’s retrospective piece on the “Genealogies of STS” (2012) looks back at controversy studies in STS and considers their role in shaping the identity of STS as an empirical investigation into science epistemology.
For the moment, we can summarize the lessons that controversy mapping takes from this literature in what we call the cartographer’s creed:
I will follow the actors
. I will not presume to know better than the people I am studying. I will learn from them what is relevant and important, what belongs to the controversy and what does not. I will not silence the voices I do not agree with or that I find off topic.
I will provide weighting
. I will grant visibility to actors in a way that is proportional to the difference they make in the debate. I will not represent all viewpoints as equally important but take responsibility for weighting their influence and importance.
I will state my position
. I will not pretend to be disinterested. I will not hide my opinion about the subject I am studying. I will make clear how my stakes in the debate influence how I explore and represent it.
I will stay with the trouble
. I will not avoid the complexity of the controversy by means of methodological or theoretical shortcuts. I will not use my explanatory framework to take refuge from the incongruity and bewildering richness of social situations.
I will follow the medium
. I will take advantage of the fact that controversies are made public, and thus mediated and recorded, by digital technologies. While investigating these records, I will also investigate the sociotechnical infrastructures that produce them and consider the specific ways in which they act upon the situation they mediate.
I will draw legible maps
. In order to provide overview and facilitate navigation, maps are necessarily simplifications of the territory they represent. Making legible maps of sociotechnical debates is the only legitimate reason for reducing the complexity of a controversy. Yet, my simplification will be cautious, transparent, respectful, and leave others the possibility to reverse it.
I will open my inquiry to others
. Whenever possible, I will make publicly available the data I collect, the code I develop, and the text and images I produce. I will share my investigation with the people that have stakes in it and invite them to participate.
