Compare methods

	Issue Mapping	Controversy Mapping
Field	Science Technology Studies	Science Technology Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2015	2010
Originator	Noortje Marres, Richard Rogers	Bruno Latour (Sciences Po médialab); codified by Tommaso Venturini
Type	Issue-centred digital research method	Qualitative descriptive method and pedagogy
Seminal source	Rogers, R., Sánchez-Querubín, N., & Kil, A. (2015). Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN: 9789089647160	Venturini, T. (2010). Diving in magma: how to explore controversies with actor-network theory. Public Understanding of Science, 19(3), 258-273.
Aliases	Issue cartography, Issue network mapping, Digital issue analysis	Cartography of controversies, Mapping scientific controversies, Controversy analysis
Related	4	4
Summary	Issue mapping is an issue-centred digital research method that charts the actors, objects, and concerns gathered around a public issue—ageing, climate, vaccines, migration—using web and social-media data. Descended from controversy mapping but reoriented around the issue rather than a controversy or a pre-given social domain, it draws on Noortje Marres's pragmatist account of issue formation and the Amsterdam Digital Methods Initiative's repertoire to let the issue itself demarcate who and what counts.	Controversy mapping is a descriptive method for exploring and representing socio-technical disputes while they are still open and unsettled, before they harden into accepted facts or stable technologies. Developed as a teaching practice by Bruno Latour and codified by Tommaso Venturini at the Sciences Po médialab, it asks the analyst to dive into the heat of a debate, follow the actors and their arguments without prematurely taking sides, and render the resulting complexity legible through maps and visualisations. It treats controversy not as a pathology to be resolved but as the privileged moment in which the social and the technical are visibly being assembled.