Abstract
Emerging approaches in social sciences and new media studies involve inquiry into social issues via the web. By collecting, analysing and visualising digital traces (i.e. posts, tweets, comments), a “issue map” can be created in order to make visible and understandable the network of the actors involved and their position in any public debate. Drawing on experiences gathered during a European project, we identified a two-phases-approach for the creation of issue maps. In the two phases - exploration and communication - visualisations play a key role, with two different connotations: in the first, they act as analytical devices used by researchers. In the second, they become communicative artefacts for a larger public. In this paper, we describe how we defined this approach, outlining the theoretical background and its connections with communication design. We highlight the main criticalities found in designing the issue maps before finally presenting our results.
Keywords
Communication design, information visualisation, issue mapping, controversy mapping, digital methods
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.185
Citation
Mauri, M., and Ciuccarelli, P. (2016) Designing diagrams for social issues, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.185
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Designing diagrams for social issues
Emerging approaches in social sciences and new media studies involve inquiry into social issues via the web. By collecting, analysing and visualising digital traces (i.e. posts, tweets, comments), a “issue map” can be created in order to make visible and understandable the network of the actors involved and their position in any public debate. Drawing on experiences gathered during a European project, we identified a two-phases-approach for the creation of issue maps. In the two phases - exploration and communication - visualisations play a key role, with two different connotations: in the first, they act as analytical devices used by researchers. In the second, they become communicative artefacts for a larger public. In this paper, we describe how we defined this approach, outlining the theoretical background and its connections with communication design. We highlight the main criticalities found in designing the issue maps before finally presenting our results.