Digital roots of social representation: Mapping the controversy about synthetic biology

This paper focuses on the potentials
and pitfalls of using digital
traces and “the logics of the Web” to make the controversy about
synthetic biology visible (Roge
rs, 2009). By crawling the Web
from five different access points that are heavily used by the UK
public, the paper argues that the Web does not have one filtering
logic. Each access-point de
marcates and organizes the
controversy in its own way by
making a specific socio-technical
assemblage (Callon, 1986) visible to the user, and the paper calls
such a scope of visibility for a 'W
eb-vision.' It demonstrates how
such visions differ in both te
mporal and spatial terms across
different access points to the Web. By taking the controversy
about synthetic biology as its
point of departure, the paper
accordingly provides answers to two questions. The first question
is whether the method of following digital traces on the Web can
enable a new form of computational 'seeing' in relation to bio-
technological controversies. Th
e second is whether different
access-points allow for different 'eyeballs' that perform the social
in different ways. Theoretical
ly, the paper engages in a
discussion with STS writings about the potential of using digital
traces to understand biotechnological controversies (Rogers,
2009; Latour, 2007) and it supplements this literature with a
theoretical model of 'Web vision' which is methodologically
grounded in network analysis a
nd web ethnography. Besides that,
the paper discusses with the body of literature arguing that
information filters on the Web has the potential to represent and
organize such controversies in
new and more democratic ways
(Benkler, 2006; Shirky, 2008).