Landscaping climate change: a mapping technique for understanding science and technology debates on the World Wide Web

New World Wide Web (web) mapping techniques may inform and ultimately facil itate meaningful participation in current science and technology debates. T he technique described here "landscapes" a debate by displaying key "webby" relationships between organizations. "Debate-scaping" plots two organizati onal positionings-the organizations' inter-hyperlinking as well as their di scursive affinities. The underlying claim is that hyperlinking and discursi ve maps provide a semblance of given socio-epistemic networks on the web. T he climate change debate on the web in November 1998 serves as a test case. Three findings are reported. First, distinctive .com, .gov and .org Linkin g styles were found. Second, organizations take care in making hyperlinks, leading to the premise that the hyperlinks (and the "missing links") reveal which issue and debate framings organizations acknowledge, and find accept able and unacceptable. Finally, it was learned that organizations take subs tantive positions and address other organizations' positions. Thus, we foun d the makings of a "debate" that may be mapped. Scenarios of use to support new public participation techniques and experiments are discussed by way o f conclusion.