Risk-Cartography User Guide

Risk Cartography is a mapping tool directed to better equip civil society for reflexive risk governance, that is to enhance various stakeholders understandings and representational abilities for an emancipated involvement in decision making and in collaborative transformation of contested risks (MACOSPOL).

Classified under Case Studies (Nano, Dietary supplements), Mapping Approaches (Public engagement), Tools Applied (Risk cartography), Users (Academics, Issue professionals, Journalists, Decision-makers), Styles Of Inquiry (Opening black boxes, Historical reconstruction), Visualizations (Debate map, Argumentation landscape), Controversy Types (Risk), Data Management (Assembling stakeholders, Expert interviews, Document analysis / media analysis), Conceptual (Controversy infrastructure)

Risk Cartography User Guide

The Risk Cartography (www.risk-cartography.org) aims at an integrative and multi-perspective knowledge platform to deal with risk controversies and to open up the debate for civil society and for better decision making and knowledge-based regulation. Risk cartographies can be explored from different perspectives following the individual needs and concerns of various users. The strategy of mapping risk controversies in the risk cartography is to address the problems of knowing respectively of evaluating by assembling heterogeneous involved elements: the mapping gathers the protagonists of risk controversies, their institutions, the issues at stake, the prominent statements, the involved materials and technologies. Moreover, it intends to go back to sources, to chronologies and underlying narratives.

We have chosen one typical matter of concern in contemporary risk societies to explore the features of the risk cartography from one of the case studies: the growing concern about production, use and release of nanoscale particles in industry and everyday life is mirrored by the debate around the contentious harmlessness of titanium dioxide in sunscreens with a sun protection factor above 15. Titanium dioxide is a nanoscale material engineered in the laboratory of the chemical company Degussa and known since long for its strong effect in wastewater treatment. There is a large debate about potential risks if nanoscale objects like TIO2 can cross the skin, cellborders or the blood-brain barrier. It is also debated whether there are considerable risks for employees that produce these tiny particles.
The first page (see figure 1) of the Risk Cartography gathers a few of the most frequently addressed elements of risk controversies in relation to nanoscale materials to open up the complex landscape of the debate in a users’ friendly way – respecting that the first 45 seconds are crucial for a users’ decision to go on to explore the risk cartography.

Figure 1

Figure 1: The first page of Risk Cartography shows the most frequently addressed elements of the risk controversy in relation to nanoscale materials.

The layout of Risk Cartography is devided into three basic areas: Navigator, Infobox and visualisation area. The Navigator is located at the top of the page. It serves as orientation tool telling the users where they are within the risk cartography and what they might explore from this position. At the moment it is suggested to choose one special element from the visualisation area or to go on by choosing one of the generic terms in the coloured bar above.
On the right side is the second feature of the cartography which is called „Infobox“. It provides users with background information on the current view. As risk debates are always controversies about competing knowledge-claims, the Infobox plays a central role in showing links that might not have been seen before. Just now it informs what this special risk discourse on nanoparticles is all about. Additionally it offers background information about the different, if even divergent, positions in the debate. Thereby it links information about the enrolled political, social and economic players with their positions and their share in the controversy. This time it tells us what nanoscale particles are, that they are seen as promising and innovative technology and enjoy great popularity in a growing market. But at the same time warnings on risks have been expressed. The crucial point in the debate is that the controversy is still characterized by a serious lack of sound (scientific) knowledge for dealing with potential risks of nanoscale materials.
Reading the Infobox, users get a first impression on the main discussion strands in the case: Although there are some issues on environmental and health risks being discussed, in media and in policy arenas the focus is on adapted ways of risk management and risk policy of nanotechnologies and on the issue of the necessity for regulation.
The third feature is the most prominent: the visualisation area as core of the risk-cartography. In the visualisation area the elements of the controversy are brought together. By travelling the cartography the user generates associations exploring bit by bit different perspectives in the risk controversy. The viewer doesn’t see pre-established connections, that could be explained in a monographic risk study as well, but he can explore the “associations” of the risk controversy due to his own preferences and interests. Users can generate views which follow their personal needs and thereby they can get by and by a structured insight in what we call “infrastructures of risk”.
At the moment it presents an arbitrary ensemble of unconnected elements represented by different icons. Every icon stands for one group of elements of the controversy: protagonists, issues, materials or things and statements. Human actors, the protagonists, have blue flags and small people, materials have green flags with a test-tube, issues have orange flags with question marks and statements have a red flag. For didactic purposes we start the cartography with this overview to immediately give an impression of the broadness of the controversy and in the same time telling the user that every association up to now done in the visualisation area is the result of its own perspective and the issues, protagonists or materials chosen for the further journey in the cartography. Thus no master perspective or master story is to be expected in the following.
When the user chooses one element, he is brought to an empty visualisation area with the chosen element in the center. The Infobox gives background information on the chosen element and the Navigator shows how the user can associate more elements to the chosen one by using the “Networker” (see figure 2). The Networker will open on mouseover at the top of each elementīs flag. By choosing categories from the Networker, the user can show or hide elements that are associated with the corresponding element. By doing this, the user takes his way through Risk-Cartography.

Figure 2

Figure 2: Each element can be associated by the “Networker”.

The second possibility of manipulating Risk-Cartography is to click on an element. By doing so, the Infobox will show background information of the chosen element. For the user, navigation in Risk-Cartography is very easy. Two ways of control are enough to navigate the whole site: use the networker to show or hide more elements, or change the Infobox by mouseclick on an element.
Instead of choosing a single element to start exploring the controversy, the user can also begin his journey with an overview of all protagonists (Who are the actors?), matters of concern (What is at stake?) or things (What are the interacting identities?) involved in the conflict. These views can be accessed by clicking on the coloured bar on top of the visualisation and provide a convenient and user friendly overview. Thus there are different points of departures to build the visualisation: 1. complex landscape of the debate as mixed overview and 2. three categories in the coloured bar (protagonists, things and matters of concern). For example, you can get an overview of the matters of concern that are at stake (see figure 3).

Figure 3

Figure 3: Risk Cartography gives an overview of the matters of concern that are at stake.

By browsing the controversy, users will generate visualisations showing assemblages of four kinds of elements that are crucial for understanding a controversy: protagonists, issues, claims and things (see figure 4). Risk-Cartography does not only show the assemblage of the elements, it also shows the connections between them. Due to the structure of the database, elements can only be visualised if they are connected to others – if there is no connection between some elements they will not be part of the visualisation . This integration of otherwise often analytically separated elements is one of the key achievements of Risk-Cartography. For instance it can be shown which protagonists are talking about a certain issue and what their opinions and statements are. Additionally every element that is shown on the screen can be highlighted or pallid whether it has a direct association to the central element or not.

Figure4

Figure 4: The map shows assemblages of four kinds of elements that are crucial for understanding a controversy: protagonists, matters of concern, claims and things.

Additionally we have integrated more features into Risk-Cartography that give further different insights into the case studies such as “chronologies”, “stories of material transitions” as well as “narrations” that will identify and highlight those elements being part of the same cosmology: the same world view including typical storylines about how the good should be reached and which rules of avoidance are to be respected. Most of these additional features will open new windows or tabs in the browser, so the user does not lose his or her last picture of the controversy.
By providing a chronology of the case-study within the Risk Cartography, the historical dimension of the risk controversy, its dynamics and the influences of the international development (as it is shown in the case of nanotechnology on the German debate) will be illustrated (see figure 5). It shows important events, inventions, findings, discoveries, turns, breaches and publications that constitute the controversy since its beginnings. Last not least, the chronology wants to highlight those narrative turns which shape the discourses running under the term of “nanotechnology”.
The chronology itself is divided in two respectively three horizontal threads: In the nanocase the above one shows the history of manufacturing and manipulating of nanoscale particles. It demonstrates that nanoscale particles were used in handcraft and even industrial procedures centuries before the term “nanotechnology” emerged in the end of the 20th century. The thread below traces the development of the debate on nanotechnology. The term itself appeared for the first time in 1974, but it was not until the mid-1980ies that the term established in public discourse, more precisely when Eric Drexler published his book titled “Engines of Creation”. The case study about dietary supplements needs one further thread linking the technical and the discursive courses to central events in regulations and thus giving insight that sometimes material or technical discoveries, sometimes new framings give the impulse for political or administrative interventions.

Figure 5

Figure 5: The chronology of nanoscale materials.

So called “stories of material transitions” have been added to the Risk Cartography (see figure 6). In the perspective of natural sciences, materials and substances in particular often appear as faceless aggregates of atoms and molecules. Our intention was to provide not more detailed information about specific materials and substances which are part of the debate and that are already known but to describe the histories of materials and substances with further background information that could be interesting to an audience beyond experts. For instance what are the different stations, that a substance has passed before it reached consumers or which valuation has the substance had in former societies? And what will happen to these substances, materials or products after consumption or usage (recycling and treatment processes as well as potential effects on the environment, society or economy etc.)? These stories also want to accentuate special characteristics of the substance, e.g. working conditions at the beginning of a (supply) chain, ecological particularities, side effects or cultural anomalies etc. The story will be told in different ways, as text, as picture-story and as audio-file. Thus those stories do not address on experts alone but refer to a wide audience and at least intend to be entertaining.

Fugure 6

Figure 6: Substance Stories

Related items from Macospol

Dietary Supplements Dynamic Animation
The architecture of the controversy on dietary supplements visualized in a dynamic animation.