Debate Mapping the Climate Sceptics

A lot of our argument visualization research is focused now on Climate Change. Here’s an example, thanks to the work that Anna De Liddo is doing on the our Collective Intelligence project. The BBC journalist Richard Black wrote an introductory piece on climate sceptics:

What do “climate sceptics” believe?

You might think that you know the answer, having heard, seen and read numerous counter-blasts aimed at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over the course of this year, as the three components of its landmark climate assessment were published.

Despite having reported on climate change for more than a decade, I realised at the beginning of the year that I was not entirely sure.

[…] So I decided I had better try to find out.

The result was a summary of the “Top 10” arguments, and possible responses, which we have re-rendered in the Cohere knowledge mapping tool, to make clearer than prose can show what are the key relationships (supporting or challenging) between the different claims in the debate. (Once you’re logged in, you can then add new connections to support/challenge or link to new web resources backing a given contribution.)

[You’ll need Java to view this one] Here’s an embedded “ConnectionNet” applet providing a porthole view into the debate space — a self-organising graph of the whole debate map.

Click on the lower green View in context button to view either of the following maps properly, within Cohere:

Below is an alternative view we call the “Network Neighborhood”, showing a focal Idea with the incoming and outgoing connections one level deep. This provides a different, more structured way to step through the moves in the debate — clicking in an Idea moves it into the central focal point, updating the incoming/outgoing connections:

See also Mapping the Gaza Crisis for the great work our colleagues are doing with Debategraph…

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