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Similarly, Pieter Franken, co-director of Safecast, claims
that the map published by the association forced the relevant
ministries to publish their radioactivity measurements. He
argues that the government data were published online
twice, only a few days after the Safecast maps:
The government has released data, but they have
always been releasing them later on, they have
been releasing them more or less after we release
them. The first map we publish […] with this
system, literally the next day the government
releases a map with measurements they had
made three weeks before that. So it can be
coincidental, but my feeling is that they were
forced to go and publish it because we published
it. Pieter Franken, interview, August 30, 2011
However, it remains very difficult to find evidence for
Haruhiko Okumura and Pieter Franken's claims.
7.2. Taking action on the basis of a map
Comment sections reveal how the maps circulate once
they are published. They can be used as tools to compare the
different measurements or to step in on a controversial
point. Discussions on maps tend to quickly focus on the data
they display rather than the maps themselves. The maps are
therefore not a black box, but, on the contrary, continually
opened up and discussed.
Two comment sections were analyzed to understand how
maps circulated: first, the EX-SKF blog, written in English by
an anonymous Japanese blogger, discusses at length the
radiation status in Japan; and second, the Safecast mailing
list
1
,
which
is
both
a
tool
for
internal
organization
1 This Google group was created on April 20, 2011 and is made up of 463
members (July 7, 2012).
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