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Controversy Mapping: A Field Guide
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.
385 pages, Hardcover
Published December 13, 2021
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March 15, 2022
Fascinating, generative and refreshingly written, this field guide describes the use of digital methods to explore and map technoscientific controversies. Very helpful in describing the context out of which controversy mapping emerged (actor-network theory), as well as detailing specific digital methods and tools for doing this work.
"The problem of modernity is that most of the actors that used to be defined as docile intermediaries turn out to be recalcitrant mediators. This is true for human beings (migrants, indigenous people, social minorities) as well as for non-human ones (endangered species, polluted aquifers, climatic systems, zoonotic viruses)" (261). Actor-network theory has come a long way since even a decade ago, finally starting to answer the call of feminist science studies scholars like Donna Haraway, Susan Leigh Star, Karen Barad, and others, to attend to questions of power: not just tracing the networks of those who have it, but making visible those whom power has excluded and suppressed.
"The problem of modernity is that most of the actors that used to be defined as docile intermediaries turn out to be recalcitrant mediators. This is true for human beings (migrants, indigenous people, social minorities) as well as for non-human ones (endangered species, polluted aquifers, climatic systems, zoonotic viruses)" (261). Actor-network theory has come a long way since even a decade ago, finally starting to answer the call of feminist science studies scholars like Donna Haraway, Susan Leigh Star, Karen Barad, and others, to attend to questions of power: not just tracing the networks of those who have it, but making visible those whom power has excluded and suppressed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review