Observing Controversies Online
Tutorial 01 in a series on controversy mapping
Controversy mapping is a set of methods for charting and navigating complex socio-technical debates. We call them controversies in order to distinguish the terrain from simpler discussions where actors ‘just’ have opinions about a question. Controversies are more complicated for a number of reasons. For instance, actors will often not agree on the nature of their disagreement. They will fight to define what the relevant questions are to ask and how they should be answered. Actors will realize how different ways of posing questions lead to different types of arguments, with different types of evidence being mobilized and different types of expertise being called upon to settle disputes. They will favor certain types of experts and emphasize certain types of evidence over others. Indeed, clear and unambiguous expert advice may not be available, perhaps because the relevant field of science is itself controversial (see for example Harry Collins’ (1975) classic study of gravitational waves), perhaps because different experts have different stakes in the debate (see for example Charis Thompson’s (2002) analysis of how different fields of bioscience approach the problem of population control among elephants in the Amboseli National Park differently), or because actors outside the formal knowledge institutions realize that they have stakes in how knowledge is produced and therefore decide to intervene in that process (see for example Steven Epstein’s (1995) analysis of how patients and next of kin involved themselves as co-producers of knowledge in the diagnosis of HIV or Sarah Whatmore and Catharina Landström’s (2011) account of their participation in the Pickering Flood Action Group). Of course, the way in which such complexities are configured depends on the context and is liable to change over time. The cartographic toolbox must, therefore, be capable of adapting.
Controversy mappers are in a situation where the terrain itself is constantly evolving. It would be the equivalent of a geographic mapmaker waking up every morning to find that the tectonic plates had shifted, changing the landscape and making the previous days’ bearings and triangulations obsolete. Like James Cook surveying the New Zealand coastline for the first time, the controversy mapper does not have the luxury of an established set of reference points. The core issues of the MMR vaccine debate are not transferable to the HPV vaccine debate; the issue of same-sex marriage has different stakeholders asking different questions in different countries; much of what we thought we knew about the pros and cons of nuclear energy has been disrupted by the urgency of manmade climate change. What makes controversies interesting is precisely this ability to bring actors together in new ways, to form alliances that would otherwise have been unimaginable and create fault lines where previously there were none. They are, as Sarah Whatmore (2009) puts it, ‘generative events’. Tommaso Venturini (2010) thus compares the terrain surveyed by the controversy mapper to a magma flow: it is the ground itself that is being reconfigured. Contrary to a geographical base map which, once done, can become a stable grid that serves as a tool for making sense of all sorts of additional and unrelated information (for instance by overlaying it with data about election results, biodiversity, transport infrastructure, or language zones) a controversy map, as a matter of course, is only good for the particular controversy it purports to make navigable.
The circumcision debate on Wikipedia
As an example, let us consider the debate about circumcision as it appears on English Wikipedia. The goal of our mapping project is to provide an overview of actors and issues in the debate. This may seem simple enough at the outset, but we have to do so by following the actors in the controversy rather than our own preconceived ideas about what is relevant and who is important (see Venturini 2010 and 2012). Given the fact that controversies are complicated precisely because different actors have different ideas about which questions to ask and how to answer them, to provide an overview of actors and issues is often not simple at all.
What are the issues?
Let us begin by figuring out what the discussion is about. Wikipedia offers several good starting points, such as the main page about ‘Circumcision’, the page about ‘Circumcision controversies’, or the page about the ‘Ethics of circumcision’. A quick browse of these pages should make it clear that we are not dealing with a binary debate between supporters and opponents of circumcision. Rather, what we observe is a range of issues (or debates within the debate). For example:
- Does circumcision reduce the risk of HIV/AIDS? (Dedicated page)
- Does circumcision reduce the risk of HPV and thus cervical cancer?
- Does circumcision reduce the risk of penile cancer?
- Does circumcision reduce the risk of urinary tract infections?
- Does circumcision reduce the risk of transferring other STDs like syphilis or chlamydia to women?
- Is circumcision a cost-effective way to reduce the above-mentioned risks?
- What are the pros and cons of different pain management techniques during the procedure?
- Does circumcision affect the sensitivity of the penis and thus the ability to feel sexual pleasure as an adult?
- Does circumcision affect the parental bond?
- Can parents make a decision for a child when the procedure is irreversible and not necessary from a medical point of view?
- What weight should be given to religious arguments in that respect?
- What weight should be given to arguments about a child’s need to be socially accepted in that respect?
All of these issues assume that we are talking about the so-called ‘non-therapeutic’, i.e. not medically necessary, circumcision of infant boys. There are additional arguments to be made for (or against) circumcision as a medical treatment for conditions like phimosis or balanoposthitis. Likewise, voluntary circumcision of adult males, including for religious reasons, clearly reduces the ethical dilemmas.
Question: Can you find more circumcision-related issues to add to the list?
When a subtopic grows to a certain size, Wikipedia editors will typically branch it off from the main topic and create a dedicated article for it. For a mature topic like Circumcision, this practice effectively means that we have a large number of potentially relevant Wikipedia articles to consider. Rather than simply searching for more, we can follow how editors group articles in topical categories and sub-categories, such as this one on circumcision.
Some articles (e.g. ‘Religious male circumcision’ or ‘Holy Prepuce’) are placed directly in the main category, while others are grouped into sub-categories inside the main category (in this case ‘Circumcision debate’, ‘Female genital mutilation’ and ‘Mohel’). Indeed, the main category is itself part of even more general categories. These more general categories, into which editors have grouped the Circumcision category (e.g. ‘Human penis’ or ‘Men’s rights’), are visible at the bottom of the category page:
Question: What sub-categories are contained in the Circumcision category? What are the sub-categories of these categories? And what other categories is the Circumcision category itself a sub category of? Can you find even more circucission related issues to add to the list when you browse the articles of these categories and sub-categories?
As a mapmaker, you must now come to terms with the fact that the list you are building is not a view from nowhere. On the contrary, you are very much surveying the controversy from somewhere, first and foremost from a specific media platform, Wikipedia, but also from a specific anglophone context and a specific moment in time.
Wikipedians follow certain principles for editing articles, such as attempting to write neutrally, always cite sources and never argue from authority. These principles are enforced by the community on itself, a process that can be observed on the ‘talk’ pages behind the actual articles (click the ‘Talk’ tab on the top left of any article to see the ‘talk’ page). It stands to reason that surveying the circumcision debate on social media like Twitter or Instagram, or from more partisan sources like the websites of actors in the controversy, is unlikely to produce a list of issues identical to the one produced by surveying Wikipedia (see Jean Burgess’ (2016) cross-platform analysis of the #gamergate controversy).
As an example: compare this debate on Reddit to your list of issues from Wikipedia.
However, the fact that controversy maps are always situated perspectives is not exclusively attributable to different media. We can conduct two simple experiments to demonstrate this while staying within the boundaries of the Wikipedia platform.
First, at the top of each Wikipedia page is a tab that says ‘View history’. It allows you to inspect all previous versions of any page (e.g. the revision history of the ‘Circumcision’ page). If you inspect the very first version of the ‘Circumcision’ page from 2003 you will for instance notice that the issue of HIV/AIDS prevention is not present at all, while, compared to more recent versions of the page, significant space is dedicated to the issue of penile cancer prevention and the dubious scientific evidence underpinning it. This is potentially important. Since the medium remains constant, the change in the composition of issues could suggest that the circumcision debate actually looked different in 2003 than it does today.
Question: can you identify other changes to the composition of issues by revisiting earlier versions of circumcision-related Wikipedia pages?
Second, in the sidebar to the left of each page is a list of links to that page in different languages. These are not translated versions of the English original, but independently authored articles. This effectively means that different groups of Wikipedia editors, writing from positions in different cultural contexts, but still adhering to the same media-specific guidelines, can make circumcision-related issues visible in different ways. Again, since the medium remains constant any change in the composition of issues across different language versions of the same Wikipedia article could suggest that the circumcision debate actually looks different in different countries.
Question: How will it affect your list of issues if you switch to different language versions of the ‘Circumcision’ page?
Who are the actors?
Once we have surveyed the issues we can move on to build a list of actors. We do it in this order, and not the other way around, because controversy mapping, drawing on inspiration from ANT (again, see Venturini 2010), defines an actor as anyone or anything that makes a difference (acts) in a situation. Given the diversity of circumcision-related issues, we should assume that actors are not, in fact, actors in all situations across the controversy. We can begin with some initial observations from the ‘Circumcision’ page:
- The World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS seem to be making a difference to the issue of HIV/AIDS prevention by recommending circumcision in areas with high endemic HIV rates.
- The British Medical Association (BMA) seems to be making a difference to the issue of whether parents can decide to circumcise their children when it is not medically necessary, by stating that its members are not obliged to perform non-therapeutic circumcision. So does the German Academy for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, by recommending against non-therapeutic circumcision of infants, and the Royal Dutch Medical Association, by equating male circumcision to female genital mutilation.
- Some reformist Jewish rabbis in the U.S. seems to have made a difference to the issue of what weight should be given to religious arguments by inventing an alternative welcoming ritual, Brit Shalom, that does not involve circumcision.
When we say that these are actors because they make a difference to the debate, then what exactly do we mean? They are not observable to the controversy mapper simply because they make recommendations, have opinions, or come up with new inventions. The reason we can see them and the reason we can record them on our list is the fact that they are cited on Wikipedia. If we had worked from the assumption that things like medical associations or rabbis have some inherent relevance in the circumcision debate that entitles them, a priori, to be treated as actors, then we might have called them up or written them an e-mail to ask about their position. That is not the approach taken here. We assume nothing about relevance or actor status, except for the extremely simplistic actor-network theoretical idea that something must act in order to be acknowledged as an actor. So what is it that the BMA or the WHO have done that counts as acting here? Sure, they both want to make a difference to the circumcision debate, but what really counts is the fact that they, unlike so many other opinion holders, have managed to become mentioned in the relevant Wikipedia article. It indicates that others, namely the Wikipedians, have acknowledged their role as actors. This is, in the particular setting of a controversy mapping project on Wikipedia, the difference we can positively survey.
It adds to the media specificity of the mapmaking. Since we are committed to following the controversy wherever it takes us it also means that we cannot, on this particular map, begin to include actors simply because we feel they are missing. We are effectively trying to ‘outsource’ such decisions to the field, and in this case the field is defined by a mix of people editing Wikipedia, the technical infrastructure they have available for doing so, the principles governing the editorial process, and, of course, the wider landscape of stuff happening in the controversy (claims being made, events happening, etc.) that the editors are trying to represent. In order to get a sense of how this works, we can, again, visit the ‘talk’ page behind the actual article. Below is an example where editors debate how the issue of penile cancer prevention should be represented. Notice the argument about giving more weight to the position of the American Cancer Society. This might eventually result in the ACS gaining presence as an institution that makes a difference and this as an actor in our mapping.
Besides actors which are explicitly mentioned as influential in the text, we can also inspect the citations underpinning different claims in the text by following the footnotes. Below is an excerpt of the section on ‘Uses’ from the ‘Circumcision’ page. Notice, for instance, how two sources are cited in support of the claim that “Circumcision may be used to treat pathological phimosis, refractory balanoposthitis, and chronic or recurrent urinary tract infections”. Considering the guidelines of Wikipedia, which encourage citation, these two sources, both from pediatric textbooks, are clearly acting in the sense of ensuring that the claim is maintained on Wikipedia.
Question: Which actors can you add to the list by inspecting circumcision-related pages on Wikipedia? How do these actors make a difference? In relation to which issues?
As we expand the list you may have noticed that actors, defined solely as who- or whatever makes a difference in the situation, makes for a quite heterogeneous bunch. From what we have already covered we already have a mix of people and institutions. But why stop there? Circumcision is clearly a very physical phenomenon and material circumstances can make a big difference. At the very top of the page about ‘Circumcision’ a so-called ‘disambiguation’ announces that this page is focussed on ‘male circumcision’ whereas information about ‘female circumcision’ is found on the page about ‘Female genital mutilation’. It thus not only appears that knowledge about male and female circumcision is organized in different places, but that there is a notable difference in the connotations carried by the two procedures.
From the mapmaker’s point of view, this represents a major topographical feature in the landscape of the controversy. It appears that the physical difference in male and female circumcision (or, indeed, female genital mutilation) leads to at least two different casts of actors, touch upon at least two different sets of issues, and develop along at least two different timelines (this is what John Law and Vicky Singleton (2014) calls ‘multiplicity’). In other words: clitoris and foreskin deserve a spot on our list of actors! In fact, even if we stay within the bounds of male circumcision, the different surgical methods available for the removal of the foreskin, and their different affordances vis-a-vis the age of the patient or the circumstances of the surgery, makes a difference to how circumcision may be cast as problematic. Here are a few examples of actors that make a difference in this respect:
- Glomco clamp
- Mogen clamp
- Pastibell
- Prepex
- Shang ring
Their advantages and potential complications are described in detail on the ‘Circumcision surgical procedure’ page.
Question: Can you describe how these different non-human actors make a difference to different issues in the circumcision debate?
You have now learned how to draft a list of actors and issues. In the next tutorials, we will discuss how to gauge the importance of different actors and how to do it at scale with digital methods.
