I looked into this sort of software a couple years ago as part of a information visualization seminar at Stanford. People have been creating research prototypes and betas for a long time, aiming to support everything from education to the formalization of legal dispute resolution (“computational law”). I wasn’t impressed with what I saw in my review then, and looking around again today, it doesn’t look like things have changed much. I have never seen anything quantitative.
You can find descriptions of research systems and small-scale studies in the education vis and info-vis literatures. (InfoVis, VAST, etc.)
There’s a distinction that my post tries (ever so subtly) to establish, between “mapping arguments” in the abstract, as a grand overarching goal, possibly augmented by intuitive claims such as “visualization clarifies thinking”, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the ground-level work of mapping of a particular controversy, with a particular tool which appears adequate to the task. ISTM this community should be more interested in the latter, though observations made while mapping particular arguments can (and should) of course be used to improve the tools.
If you have an interest in the latter type of research, you might for instance want to take a look at the work of MACOSPOL, who now have an impressive looking list of mapped controversies. I’ve been talking to some of the people at Sciences Po working in that area.
I looked into this sort of software a couple years ago as part of a information visualization seminar at Stanford. People have been creating research prototypes and betas for a long time, aiming to support everything from education to the formalization of legal dispute resolution (“computational law”). I wasn’t impressed with what I saw in my review then, and looking around again today, it doesn’t look like things have changed much. I have never seen anything quantitative.
You can find descriptions of research systems and small-scale studies in the education vis and info-vis literatures. (InfoVis, VAST, etc.)
A book: http://www.visualizingargumentation.info/ A new journal: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tarc
Thanks.
There’s a distinction that my post tries (ever so subtly) to establish, between “mapping arguments” in the abstract, as a grand overarching goal, possibly augmented by intuitive claims such as “visualization clarifies thinking”, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the ground-level work of mapping of a particular controversy, with a particular tool which appears adequate to the task. ISTM this community should be more interested in the latter, though observations made while mapping particular arguments can (and should) of course be used to improve the tools.
If you have an interest in the latter type of research, you might for instance want to take a look at the work of MACOSPOL, who now have an impressive looking list of mapped controversies. I’ve been talking to some of the people at Sciences Po working in that area.