Genetically Modified Food Debates - Maps

The maps

• Genetically modified (GM) crops - The major debates
• What we don't know in the science of genetically modified crops and food
• Apparent strategies of political-economic forces
  -- Apparent strategy of genetically modified food companies
  -- Apparent strategy of anti-GM food groups

The problem
Much current policy making has these characteristics. It:

• is reflected in vast, sprawling policy debates requiring understanding both of the big picture and the details
• depends on data that are changing frequently (often daily in complex, scientific and political areas)
• requires decision making based on guesses or forecasts that in turn are based on structural constraints of organizations, frameworks of policy in place, differing logics and world views, and distinct organizational or societal cultures
• is swamped by a high degree of unknowns and unknowables
• is wrapped in constant political power struggles
• involves communication with a wide variety of publics through the filter of the media
• involves a society or organization becoming involved in an ongoing process of social learning and continuous change.
• requires the ability to bring participants up-to-speed when they have missed meetings

How do we have informed, sensible, rational policy making and execution in such a context? That is the problem to which our project attempts to contribute some tools.

Our approach
Our project has been designing and developing highly visual "cognitive maps" that facilitate the management and navigation through major public policy issues. These maps have benefits for policy analysts and decision makers similar to those of geographic maps. They provide patterned abstractions of policy landscapes that permit the decision makers and their advisors to consider which roads to take within the wider policy context. Like the hundreds of different projections of maps (e.g. polar or Mercator), they provide different ways of viewing issues and their backgrounds. They enable policy makers to drill down to the appropriate level of detail. In short they provide an invaluable information management tool.

Progress thus far
On genetically modified food. We have developed a prototype set of some of the kinds of visual cognitive maps for the debates around biotechnology and genetically modified food and crops. The prototype project was initiated and supported by New Scientist magazine with the goal of exploring what a website would look like based on our development of argumentation maps. We have since extended this work to the development several years ago of initial drafts of several additional kinds of maps.

Other policy areas. We have also developed prototypes in other policy areas including national missile defense, national drug policy, the dilemmas and dynamics of delivery of mental health services (for Portland, OR) and integration of over 400 agencies and 70 funding streams for long term care (for Alameda County CA).

Benefits: How visual cognitive maps can improve public policy discussions
Preliminary evaluations show that visual infomurals and publications contribute to better discussion and decisions. They:

• show the logical and visual structure of the emerging arguments, viewpoints, empirical data, scenarios, trends, policy options (making communication more effective) and help keep the big picture from being obscured by the details.
• enable presuppositions to surface and be carried along with the debate or made a subject of the debate (enabling a richer discourse to take place without getting off track).more rapid analysis of the subject matter by committees and policy makers
• help structure the flow of complex discussions (so that meetings are more productive and less time consuming), enabling rapid integration of diverse points of view.
• increase an appreciation for the complexity of the issues the group is addressing, permitting faster learning by experts and the general public.
• are visually appealing, colorful, and incorporate useful metaphors and images that encapsulate values and attitudes.
• enable participants who have missed meetings to catch up quickly.
• increase the chance of participants talking to each other, not past each other, bringing faster consensus in meetings.
• help participants to keep working on the problems while separated by geographical distance using the Web.

Display.
The visual cognitive maps can be displayed on road-map size paper displays, computer screens, and highly effectively as visual information murals for the use of committee and task force discussions.

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