Web-Visions as Controversy-Lenses

Abstract

Web-based visualizations are increasingly used to study and manage emerging technologies and the controversies they ignite. The first part of this paper provides a methodological review of this trend and presents a typology that organizes influential analytical approaches according to the data they use to generate visualizations; the ontology they ascribe to them and their proposed function. The second part presents ‘web-vision analysis’ as an analytical approach that has roots in different aspects of the reviewed approaches but nonetheless distinguishes itself in two ways. First, it translates the concepts of ‘calculative spaces’ and ‘attention-structures’ from economic sociology into controversy-visualization. Second, it constructs visualizations on the basis of case-study logics. The third part illustrates how this approach ultimately leads to distinct empirical choices by reflecting on the process of constructing and interpreting web-visions of synthetic biology made from January to October 2011.