Paper short abstract:

This paper intends to question what we have taken for granted in public participation in techno-scientific controversies by employing digital methods and techniques to study a high-speed train as a controversy.

Paper long abstract:

Our society is facing ever more complex techno-scientific controversies, ranging from urban infrastructures to emerging technologies. From this viewpoint, several STS scholars have praised the so-called ‘participatory turn’, in which laypeople can provide societal resources and knowledge to help solve such challenges. However, problems continue to be part of this framework. The laypeople-scientists relationship has tended to be based on a top-down approach, where science maintains a higher position at the expense of ordinary people and their participation in the debate. But current issues are wicked and need new perspectives: the co-production of knowledge has been considered a consequent evolution for better participation of laypeople.

This paper intends to shed light on these assumptions by questioning what we have taken for granted so far in such a participatory turn. To do so, it maps, according to the cartography of controversies approach, the Turin-Lyon railway line, an infrastructure that should connect Italy and France via the Alps and has generated many controversies in Italy, both among scientists and citizens over the past 30 years. After collecting data using web scraping, the paper analyses the unstructured corpus with content analysis techniques to delve into such a topic. Using digital methods and techniques to study the Turin-Lyon railway line contributes both from empirical and practical viewpoints thanks to making visible processes in this phenomenon that may be hidden in other approaches.