Controversy Mapping. Tommaso Venturini
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some are in a more direct way than others. Controversies could be bounded by their spatial context (global warming is not the same in Siberia as it is on a low-lying island in the Pacific); the communities they touch (the discussions in the IPCC are not the same as in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change); the medium in which they take place (climate debate on Twitter is not the same as in the scientific literature), etc.
Consider temporal boundaries, for instance. Some controversies have a clear start date (e.g., by the publication of a contentious paper) and a clear end date (e.g., a Nobel prize acclamation), but most do not. A good example is the controversy around gravitational waves studied by Harry Collins, which has been revived every time a new measurement technique was introduced. In such a situation, cartographers can keep investigating, as Collins did in the book he published in 2004, retracing the more than four-decade quest for gravitational waves, but could also focus on one of the “episodes” of the dispute, as Collins did in his 1975 paper discussing the debates surrounding one specific experiment.
Where to stop really depends on your resources and interests and in this sense controversy mapping is not unlike traditional cartography. Geographical territories are generally defined by natural boundaries (the shore of the sea, a major river, a mountain chain, etc.) but such boundaries are always somewhat arbitrary (Fall, 2010). So where should the mapping stop? The default solution in modern geographical cartography is simply to stop where the paper finishes. The edges of the page or of the canvas become the limits of the map. This solution acknowledges openly the arbitrariness of the cartographer’s decisions and suggests that each map is nothing but a cut of a larger atlas.
The same holds for controversy mapping. You are free to choose where to end your analysis, but you have to assume the burden of proving that your choice has practical utility (no natural boundary or theoretical framework will do this for you):
Student: But that’s exactly my problem: to stop. I have to complete this Ph.D.; I have just eight more months. You always say “more descriptions,” but this is like Freud, indefinite analysis. When do you stop? My actors are all over the place. Where should I go? What is a complete description?
Professor: Now that’s a good question because it’s a practical one. As I always say: a good thesis is a thesis that is done. But there is another way to stop than by “adding an explanation” or “putting it into a frame.”
S: Tell me it then.
P: You stop when you have written your 80,000 words or whatever is the format. (Latour, 2004a, p. 68)
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