Discussing controversial topics - context analysis

Context analysis is about approaching a certain topic and coming to terms with it, knowing basic facts about it, recognizing basic stakeholders relevant to the topic, and understanding how they are connected to it. The idea of this exercise is that students practice how to approach a certain topic: what questions to ask, how to research it. When tackling controversial topics, an analytical approach helps diffuse the tension, introduce logical reasoning, and fact-based corroboration of claims to the discussion.

At the beginning of the session, you should inform your students of the topic you are going to be analyzing, or pick out a topic with your students.

As an example, we will set the following discussion topic: Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. If you are not familiar with this particular example, we suggest you read this Wiki article for a basic overview.

You can pick your own topics for this exercise (if you need any help with that, you can check out the Classroom preparation chapter in the Melita Methodological Guide), but it is helpful to read through this example either way.

Basic definitions

With the topic being written on the whiteboard, you should begin by making sure everyone understands what the words contained in the topic statement actually mean. This will be more or less significant depending on how familiar or foreign a certain topic is to your students. At this point, you should be focused only on the main meaning, i.e. you are not, at this point, engaging in any further discussion.

Elon Musk is one of the world's richest people, who bought Twitter.

Twitter is one of the most popular social media, where people share “tweets,” which usually contain 280 characters. Twitter is a prominent platform of political discussion, news and similar short blog posts.

Identifying stakeholders

After we know what we are discussing, we should begin identifying stakeholders. A stakeholder is a person, group of people, entity, or really anyone/anything with a stake in a certain phenomenon. You should have students suggest different stakeholders and write them on the whiteboard. Pay special attention to stakeholders which might be divisible into different sub-groups. This part is explained more closely in the Act as a stakeholder lesson plan, so you should consult it in case of confusion.

Twitter users (public figures, institutions, regular people)

Advertisers

Twitter staff

Politicians (various countries)

Other social media

…

Identifying settings

After knowing roughly who plays a part in a certain topic, you should try to figure out as much as possible about them. That means describing them, focusing especially on properties that are pertinent to the discussion. The way you do that is that you ask the class to describe them (literally: say what they are like, give facts about them), and you put that down on the whiteboard. Focusing on properties that are important for the discussion means that for each property, fact, or adjective that your students give you, you ask the class to also determine if it is relevant for the discussion.

Example of relevant properties and characteristics:

Twitter has been financially untenable even before the takeover

Advertisers care about their public image

Social media always compete against each other

…

Example of less relevant (though very few are to be totally discarded) properties and characteristics

Twitter was founded in 2006

Social media has a lot of cat pictures.

Identifying connections

The last step of the context analysis is to try and see how different stakeholders and settings connect to one another. This is the most difficult and advanced part of context analysis. At this point you should preferably use the second whiteboard (or clear the first one), and your students should suggest important connections. There are some pointers that can help you with that:

1. ask the students to think of any possible connection (at this point it can be random)
2. ask the students to think of any possible way the stakeholders you are analysing might be benefiting from each other
3. ask the students to think of any power relations between them (does any one stakeholder have power over the other? If so, what is this power?)

You can work towards creating a sort of mind map on the whiteboard.

Advertisers are connected to Twitter users; they are present insofar as there are users.

Other social media get stronger if Twitter loses power.

Politicians use Twitter to get in touch with potential voter base.

Public figures are usually more personal on Twitter, as opposed to other social media, where their accounts are usually run by their assistants.

At the close of this session, your students will have completed a context analysis. What does this enable them to do? This is a strong starting point to any future discussion on the topic, crafting of arguments, organising a public debate or writing about the topic. Students should be encouraged to use the tools and methods received here as preparation in future assignments.

• Which step of our context analysis exercise did you find the most challenging? Why?
• Which topics would you like to see analyzed using this approach?