BLOG VII

Issue mapping

Together with my peer, we came back to the mapping of stakeholder’s exercise that we initially started in week 3. We reflected on the structure and content of our first map and discussed how we could re-organise and build even further. Drawing on the text ‘Reassembling the Social’ by Latour (2005) we decided to break up the broad sub category of ‘society’ since this is a very hard group to define due to its conflicting values and forces. In this map we instead let stakeholders within the stand by themselves and this made it easier to define motivations and tensions between them. Since both me and my peer had done research into different areas within gender equality this broadened our map where different stakeholder were driving forces within different areas.

Issue mapping of stakeholders by Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z (2016)

 

We chose to explore further on an issue revolving gender violence. To analyse the issue from a greater perspective, we defined human and non-human actors, motivations, emotions etc. within a number of subcategories. This specific issue was not something I had included in my research, although seeing that some actors are playing big roles in all issues. For example – Stereotyping and gender expectations.

Mapping of actors within issue by Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. (2016)

Within these categories we then chose a few subjects to interrogate by asking a number of questions. For example – Alcohol, what is the actor responsible for? What does it value? Associations, accountability? This way of questioning an actor and its role could lead finding solutions and possibilities in a less obvious space within the issue itself.

Mapping of actor by Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. (2016)

To summarise,

revisiting our issue mapping exercise as a group allowed both of us to add detail to our understanding and our representation of stakeholders involved in the issues. From this improved representation we were then able to isolate and interrogate individual stakeholders, and accurately frame their role within the issue and their influence on outcomes. With this method of mapping new possibilities can present themselves, and possibilities in affecting change can also be found by putting yourself in the role of an actor.

By Camilla Ahlström

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_{Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. 2016, Issue mapping of stakeholders, Class Exercise, University of Technology, Sydney}

_{Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. 2016, Mapping of Actor, Class Exercise, University of Technology, Sydney}

_{Ahlstrom, C. Hartwig, Z. Meland, J. 2016, Mapping of actors within issue, Class Exercise, University of Technology, Sydney}

_{Latour, B., 2005, ‘Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory’, Oxford University Press, pp. 4-5, 23, viewed 4 September 2016, <http://www.dss-edit.com/plu/Latour_Reassembling.pdf>}

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