Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
8
The Shape of Public Engagement
What sort of relationship exists between the properties of maps and the collaborative
work done to extract and map the radiation data? Walter Lippmann and John Dewey
provide tools to investigate that question. They both highlight the involvement of the
public in controversies. Crossing their contribution with a Sciences and Technology
Studies (STS) approach [MAR 05a, MAR 09] sheds light on the relation between the
material properties of maps and the way they shaped online engagement in the present
case study. The public participation in the production of radiation data and their
mapping is here characterized as a “foam” [RIE 10]; it is based on “low cooperation”
[CAR 10] and relies on the “synchorization” of online spaces [BEA 12]. Furthermore,
what was the lifecycle of the mobilization? The public involved was spontaneous and
did not produce a common infrastructure to share the radiation data. This was due both
to the heterogeneity of the participants involved and also to the shortness of the
applications' lifespan, as these were created to respond to an urgent need for
information rather than being long-term solutions.
8.1. An emerging online public
Walter Lippmann and John Dewey laid the foundations
for reflection on the role of socio-technical controversies in
society and their impact on the emergence of a public in
politics. Noortje Marres bases her work on these authors and
stresses the need to take into account the material nature of
controversial issues when analyzing how a public is involved
online. These theoretical frameworks can be applied to the
Web to analyze the pattern followed by heterogeneous
mobilization to create radiation maps. The public involved
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