This document summarizes three controversies related to climate change: the existence and attribution of climate change, mitigation of climate change through reducing emissions, and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. It discusses how controversy mapping can observe controversies in their full complexity while providing readable descriptions for the public. It also notes some challenges with controversy mapping, such as different viewpoints seeking unequal representation. Finally, it introduces the EMAPS and MEDEA projects, European collaborations from 2011-2014 that used digital methods and information design to map debates around climate change science and adaptation.

1. Communicating Controversies
some examples from the climate debate
and the EMAPS/MEDEA projects
Tommaso Venturini
tommaso.venturini@sciences-po.org

2. Who is to decide
on technoscience?

3. « It is controversies of this kind, the hardest controversies to
disentangle, that the public is called in to judge. Where the facts
are most obscure, where precedents are lacking, where novelty
and confusion pervade everything, the public in all its unfitness is
compelled to make its most important decisions » (p. 121).
Here comes the
public
Walter Lippmann, 1925
The Phantom Public

4. Controversy mapping
paradox
Observe controversies in their full complexity
Provide the public with a readable description

5. The one thing I’ve learnt from
controversy mapping controverses.sciences-po.fr/archiveindex/

6. 3 types of controversies
Complexity
(n° of positions)
Dynamism
(positions change)
Blocked controversies
Structured controversies
Emerging controversies

7. The end of Nature

8. The end of Nature

9. 3 controversies
on climate
Existence & Attribution
1. Are we changing the climate?
Mitigation
2. How do we fight climate change?
Adaptation
3. How do we adapt to climate change?

10. 1. Are we changing the
climate?

11. The dark side of controversy
mapping

12. George Marshall
Institute

13. How to stall regulation with
controversies
Mix equal parts of:
Relativism
address the media claiming equal attention for all positions
Constructivism
describe research uncertainties, complexities and connection
Positivism
demand scientific truth to be certain, consensual, independent

14. Is there controversy?
Yale & Gallup, 2007
http://environment.yale.edu/news/5305

15. Opinion change
Is there solid evidence the earth is warming?
http://people-press.org/2010/10/27/little-change-in-opinions-about-global-warming/
PEW Research Center
(Octobre, 2010)

16. Talk-show neutrality

17. Wikipedia neutrality

18. Second-degree neutrality
Give viewpoints visibility according to
• their representativeness
• their influence
• their interest

19. Representing
viewpoints http://controverses.sciences-po.fr/archive/decroissance/debat.html

20. 2. How do we fight climate
change?

21. United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change

22. International Panel on Climate
Change

23. Controversy Mapping
North
Pole
Japan
sea
rise
Tuvalu
bio
diversity
CO2
emissions
carbon
market
IPCC
climate
models
peak
2009, UNFCC
COP15 Copenhagen

24. Mapping an existing
territory

25. Mapping a
changing territory http://controverses.medialab.sciences-po.fr
/archive/mediator/chrono.html

26. 3. How do we adapt to
climate change? www.weadapt.org

27. The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect
consequences of transactions (pp. 16-17).
In no two ages or places is there the same public. (p. 33).
It is not that there is no public... There is too much public, a
public too diffused and scattered and too intricate in composition.
And there are too many publics (p. 137)
The Public and its
Problem John Dewey, 1946

28. digital methods & information design
Observe controversies in their full
complexity
Provide the public with readable
descriptions

29. EMAPS + MEDEA
2011-2014

30. EMAPS + MEDEA
EMAPS
Electronic Maps To Assist Public Science
EU, Framework Program 7, Science in Society
MEDEA
Mapping Environmental DEbate on Adaptation
ANR, Changements Environnementaux Planétaires
et Sociétés (CEP&S)
2011-2014

31. EMAPS Role MEDEA
Sciences Po médialab coordination Sciences Po médialab
Institute of Spatial Planning, Dortmund
University scientific expertise
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et
Environnement
Politecnico di Milano, DensityDesign design &
development
ENSAD
Barcelona Media
mathematical
analysis
DMI, University of Amsterdam
digital expertise
The Young Foundation public debate
Parterns

32. Timelines
November 2011
November 2014

33. www.emapsproject.com/blog

34. projetmedea.hypotheses.org

35. tommaso.venturini@sciences-po.fr
Venturini, T. (2010)
Diving in Magma: how to explore controversies with actor-network theory
Public Understanding of Science, 19(3), 258
Venturini, T. (forthcoming)
Building on Faults: how to represent controversies with digital methods
Public Understanding of Science