Blog Post 4.2: Mapping Steak holders

In an attempt to better our understanding  refugee and asylum seeker issues we spent time in class mapping different participants and steak holders involved within selected issues.

This was an initial map that my team made together. It was essentially a categorising of a bran dump that we completed earlier. We tried applying basic categories under which each participant fell. Minimal detail was put into the specifics in this mapping exercise.

The map above is an example of human and non-human stakeholders within the issue of refugees and asylum seekers. The focus within this map is local, keeping the focus around Australian’s our laws, values and the steak holders e.g the Australian media, Australian NGO’s and resources. Whilst completing this task we realised how complex and diverse the issues surrounding refugees and asylum seekers are. As a result, some participants have conflicting interests and views, and in many ways were interconnected, creating a cross over effect.

Here we mapped key steak holders and their influence on the issue of refugees. An interesting element to note was that the steak holders who held the least power were refugees themselves.

Extending some of the ideas we had when creating the first map, we attempted to categorise the different steak holders and rearrange them based on the levels of power and influence. Indicative of the complexity of the issue, it was difficult to create a clear hierarchy as participants were interconnected and overlapping (e.g individual politicians and the government as an entirety). Interesting element which we discovered were that the participants who were greatly effected (refugees and asylum seekers) held the least amount of political influence whilst participants who held the greatest amount of power and influence held conservative views on immigration law (the government and mainsteam media).

These sort of exercises were particularly helpful as they promoted communication of different resources as well as drawing attention to areas where we needed to research. The secondary mapping of power and influence was particularly interesting as it showed the complexity of the problem and how hard it would be to shift attitudes which are so deeply ingrained in our society but also within our laws.

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