Post 7: Issue mapping
By Marie Good
Steroids by Magin 2016
Controversy: noun; a lot of disagreement or argument about something, usually because it affects or is important to many people (Cambridge dictionary 2016).
When it comes to living and the issues that affect us all, we are placed into a position of a passive or aggressive stance. As humans, we feel strongly about subjects such as obesity and healthy living and because of this, create controversy over and within many areas surrounding it.
Recently during a class exercise, I had the opportunity to map out actors of controversy with regards to this topic and zone in on a particular area of investigation. My group and I decided to focus on the area of performance enhancement supplements, recognising it within our first map of controversies, as a subject each group member had some knowledge about but thought might be interesting to explore. We broke this off onto one known performance enhancing drug, steroids, to investigate further in detail.
Steroid are by nature, a performance-enhancing drug, particularly found in the areas of, but not limited to, bodybuilding, strength conditioning, endurance sports and performance athletes.
We recognised six main categories we could examine closer to develop a detailed insight into the actors involved in this controversial subject, being: politics, associates, value alignments, capabilities, hierarchies, issues and challenges. From here, it was essential and crucial towards our process to involve each member’s thoughts and ideas as we all had different knowledge levels, experiences and therefore insights into steroid actors.
On looking over our end map and findings, the main issue with steroid use is formed on the basis of drug stability in regards to quality and sustainability of the individual’s life. I can identify a possibility that in order to change the minds of individuals in this area, education, potentially in the form of a health and fitness, virtual reality edutainment app could be developed or other means of education in perceiving our future selves with regards to now. This unfortunately seems to be a contradictory area within the minds of young people particularly, where by the mentality they have is focused on the idea of fun now, responsibilities later. This way of living is not sustainable to themselves, their friends and families or the communities around them.
Reference list
Cambridge dictionary, 2016, Controversy, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/controversy >.
Magin, R. 2016, steroids, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://ryanmagin.com/go/new-steroid-poormans-nobs/ >.
Emergent Practices 
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