Controversy Mapping
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.
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Sources
- Venturini, T. (2010). Diving in magma: how to explore controversies with actor-network theory. Public Understanding of Science, 19(3), 258-273. DOI: 10.1177/0963662509102694 ↗
- Venturini, T. (2012). Building on faults: how to represent controversies with digital methods. Public Understanding of Science, 21(7), 796-812. DOI: 10.1177/0963662510387558 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Controversy Mapping (Cartography of Scientific Controversies). ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/science-technology-studies/controversy-mapping
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Actor-Network Theory AnalysisScience Technology Studies↔ compare
- Boundary-Work AnalysisScience Technology Studies↔ compare
- Social Construction of TechnologyScience Technology Studies↔ compare
- Sociotechnical Imaginaries AnalysisScience Technology Studies↔ compare