MACOSPOL is a joint research enterprise that gathers scholars in science, technology and society across Europe. Its goal is to devise a collaborative platform to help students, professionals and citizens in mapping out scientific and technical controversies.
Technical democracy requires spaces and instruments to facilitate public involvement in technological and scientific issues. Such democratic equipment is yet to be assembled, even though much theoretical research has been done to envision its articulation. At the same time, digital innovations are providing an increasing number of new instruments and forums that can be used to promote public participation.
MACOSPOL has been set up to facilitate the connection between these two developments, allowing the best research in science, technology and society to ally with the best research on web-based tools.
Policy Context
In modern societies, collective life is assembled through the superposition of scientific and technical controversies. The inequities of growth, the ecological crisis, the bioethical dilemma and all other major contemporary issues occur today as tangles of humans and non-humans actors, politics and science, morality and technology. Because of this growing hybridisation complexity, getting involved in public life is becoming more and more difficult. To find their way in this uncertain universe and to participate in its assembly, citizens need to be equipped with tools to explore and visualise the complexities of scientific and technical debates. MACOSPOL's goal is to gather and disseminate such tools through the scientific investigation and the creative use of digital technologies.
The Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) aims to make the European Union the 'most dynamic competitive knowledge-based economy in the world' through strong investment in research as well as in its supporting structure. The FP7 call 'Science in Society' recognises that a strong commitment to scientific research necessitates a greater integration of science and technology within society. Improving communication channels and public interaction with science and technology are central to its objectives, and it is hoped that the MACOSPOL project can contribute to this endeavour.
The MACOSPOL project is founded on 30 years of research in the field of Science and Technology analysing the relations between the various actors involved in scientific controversies. The project also draws on 15 years of practical experience teaching students about the mapping of controversies in various universities. In recent years, several research groups have collaborated on this project and the objective now is to advance this research base by providing the platform and methodologies required for effective democratic decision-making on science and technology issues in Europe.
Description of target users and groups
Students, professionals and citizens.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The goal of the Macospol project, assembling a web-based platform to help the exploration and mapping of scientific controversies, was reached through the involvement of 8 partner teams, and different lines of research represented by 8 Work Packages.
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WP1: Collecting tools for controversy mapping
Macospol Work Package 1 consisted in surveying, testing and evaluating the massive amount of techniques, procedures, softwares, sites available on the web, and bringing them to the knowledge of the Macospol consortium.
This work was carried out by the team lead by Bruno Latour at Sciences Po in Paris, France.
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WP2: Delivering full scale two internet-based mappings of controversies.
Based on the tool "risk-cartography: visualisation of argumentative landscapes", Work Package 2 delivered cartographies on two risk controversies: food supplements and nanoscale materials.
This work was carried out by the team lead by Cordula Kropp at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, with the participation of Kristin Asdal at the University of Oslo, Norway.
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WP3: Organising the platform and improving the compatibility of the tools
The collected tools and case studies assembled on the Macospol platform were organised by Work Package 3 through interactive tutorials to help the users approach the analysis of controversies and overcome the compatibility issues.
This work was carried out by the Govcom team lead by Richard Rogers at University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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WP4: Dealing with visual space & WP5: Designing the space of controversies
Through different kinds of work (case studies, comparison between the collected tools...), geographers of Work package 4 and architecture specialists of Work Package 5 were mobilised to deal with the spatialisation of the controversies and try out a generalised spatial language for navigating controversies yet allowing for diversity of each particular case.
This work was carried out by the teams of Valérie November at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and of Albena Yaneva at the University of Manchester, UK.
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WP6 & WP7: Testing the political relevance of the platform
Integrating the information-gathering aspects and the political intervention aspects of the same topics was tested through two dry runs of the platform. The first one invited actors involved in the controversy on the disappearance of bees to experiment the platform for this case (Work Package 6). The second one tested the platform with people interested in the general questions of controversies, as if the platform was the elementary building block of a "quasi parliament" able to represent a given issue to the public (Work Package 7).
This work was carried out by the teams of François Mélard at the University of Liège, Belgium, and of Massimiano Bucchi within the organisation Osberva in Vicenza, Italy.
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WP8: Managing the Macospol project
Funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme, Macospol is a goal-oriented process which must abide the EC rules, and needs operational management guidance and follow-up.
This work was carried out by Axel Meunier at Sciences Po.
Main results, benefits and impacts
The platform http://www.mappingcontroversies.net has been tested with potential users. It is now freely available for people, whether policy-makers, journalists, NGOs, citizens, interested to map and explore controversies. Users will find on the platform:
- A collection of useful resources and digital tools, along with tutorials to use them,
- Case studies to see example of achievable results, as well as to explore particular issues,
- Literature on social theories underlying controversy mapping.
The navigation on the platform is organised so as to enable users to search these resources according to their own way of thinking and interests.
MACOSPOL final results in a nutshell:
- Surveying and evaluating the world offer of tools for mapping scientific controversy and supporting participation in technological democracy.
- Building a portfolio of case-study analysis in controversy mapping at different level of elaboration (undergraduate, graduate and PhD level).
- Identifying the drawbacks of each of the collected tools (expensive proprietary software, lack of compatibility, users' unfriendly interfaces...) in order to envision their overcoming or to find alternatives.
- Exploring how design and geography can improve the visual performance (information management, readability, second degree manipulation, transportability...) of the representing equipment for technical democracy.
- Testing the political relevance of the platform as a "quasi parliament" capable of hosting and shaping the actual debates about science and technology.
Lessons learnt
This field will be completed by the submitter when the lessons learnt have been identified and understood.
Scope: International