Cluster of My Controversy

A Cluster Map of The Chinese Science Award Controversy

Below is an image of a cluster map I created to chart the various sides of the controversy over China's National Natural Science Award. This controversy has been the subject of plagiarism accusations, warnings to the Chinese government, confessions of evaluation process corruption, and more. In this cluster map, these arguments are displayed with their major speakers in various forms of media.

mikalorenzen, "Cluster Map of My Controversy" 14 September 2015 via coggle.com
Self-use.

In my cluster map, I tried to chart out the main avenues of the controversy, namely the project itself and plagiarism accusations its receiving, worries over the award's history and China's standing in world science academia, discontent over the award's selection system that is influenced by the government, and the Chinese government's agenda in the realm of computer science.

In these various aspects of argument surrounding the controversy, I identified key speakers or players in the issue, such as the China Computer Federation, the Chinese government, Zhang Yaoxue, and even anonymous individuals at universities who wished to avoid being named since they were speaking out against the government's role in the selection process.

Lastly, I tried to display where the controversy becomes clearer above and below the initial box, as in each area two different aspects of argument converge, ultimately creating a more complete picture that sheds insight on the issue.

Reflection

In reading Brandon's and Dylan's posts and viewing each of their cluster maps, I learned the most about the tools for cluster mapping. As evidenced in Dylan's map, which he made on Google Docs, using that tool allows you to insert images into your map, which makes it visually pleasing, but perhaps at the cost of the easy-to-use branching of coggle. And in inspecting Brandon's map, which I was really impressed with, I learned that coggle can actually be used to create an incredibly structured layout, which I admired in contrast with my own map which was less organized but followed and united arguments on my topic. Honestly, I feel that I could perhaps reorganize my map to look more structured after seeing Brandon's map, but I did learn that your map can be organized based on different criteria. All in all, I think that coggle and cluster mapping are both extremely useful for pre-writing. I mean it when I say that I will use it in the future.