Tommaso Venturini - Controversy Mapping

1 Cover

2 Dedication Dedication To our teachers and our students

3 Title Page Controversy Mapping A Field Guide Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk polity

4 Copyright 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 Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, 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-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003318 LC 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. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

5 Acknowledgments

6 Preface: The politics of association on display by Richard Rogers

7 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

8 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

9 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

10 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

11 Controversy mapping in the shadow of Gaia The end of Nature Learning from Penelope

12 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”

13 References

14 Index

15 End User License Agreement

1 Cover

2 Table of Contents

3 Dedication

4 Title Page

5 Copyright

6 Acknowledgments

7 Preface: The politics of association on display by Richard Rogers

8 Introduction

9 Begin Reading

10 Controversy mapping in the shadow of Gaia

11 A conversation with Bruno Latour

12 References

13 Index

14 End User License Agreement

1 Preface: The politics of association on display by Richard Rogers Figure 0Mapping the online mentions of rare minerals

2 Introduction Figure 1Tree of disagreements around the conservation of Amboseli elephants Figure 2Actor/issue table of the Amboseli controversy Figure 3Network of actors in the Amboseli controversy Figure 4Debate scales and scale inversion in the Amboseli controversy Figure 5Stream diagram of the temporal evolution of the Amboseli controversy

3 Chapter 1 Figure 6Map of how three different indexes of vulnerability disagree in assessing countr… Figure 7Bilateral adaptation funding and vulnerability indexing Figure 8Controversy mappers accused of spying on wind turbine opponents Figure 9Four criteria for estimating the feasibility of a controversy mapping project Figure 10The hype cycle of controversy mapping

4 Chapter 2 Figure 11First attempt at inventorying the issues surrounding the plans for developing th… Figure 121934 map of Southern Copenhagen circulated by the developer as part of the debat… Figure 13Map of the area where the development is planned showing the concentration of un… Figure 14Map demonstrating that the construction site is on the site of the old landfill Figure 15Two of the photos showing how in 2001 the meadows were almost completely strippe… Figure 16Map of the area showing the location of the red-listed species and the planned d…

5 Chapter 3 Figure 17Screenshot of a post on the Friends of the Common Facebook group with the three … Figure 18Artistic rendition of the proposed artificial island “Nordhaleøen” Figure 19Area 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 21Facebook posts from the Friends of the Common group, and from the pages for the … Figure 22Banksy, Love Is in The Air, Flower Thrower, 2005