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Researchers Researchers and research funders use mediated modeling to scope out a research program and to maintain a comprehensive picture of the program's progress. Funders Ever been to a conference or annual meeting of a large group of researchers (such as the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) groups? Typically one is bombarded with speeches of 20 minutes and there is no real coherency between those performances when the meeting breaks up. At best a book or web site appears with abstracts or the full papers of the talks. The bigger picture is lost. None of the researcher really knows where he/she fits into the overall program. Who does? The funders? We wonder about that.... Mediated modeling can be used as an integrative tool during meetings. Presentations are limited to a five minutes. The rest of the time is devoted to place the research subject and its findings in a simulation model projected on the wall. The input from all attending researchers is appreciated to help find the connections between the presented research topic and other topics of research. Overlaps in the program may become evident and form a basis for improved cooperation. Gaps in the knowledge may emerge and parts that should be emphasized may become clear. Researchers Researchers can be viewed as stakeholders in the processes of finding solutions to publicly relevant problems. It is the role of researcher to try and maintain as objective a view as possible as well as apply logical thinking in their research. Objectivity is nice in principle but impossible in practice. Therefore, a researcher can be a stakeholder in a broader context and learn from his/her practical environment as well as provide knowledge on specialized issues to a broader group. The researcher is highly respected for the capacity to think logically. There are good reasons to include stakeholders in the modeling process, for example: to gain more/better data, to build trust, to experience a mutual group-learning process, plus the more general idea of fostering the democratic process. Many researchers feel that there are also good reasons to exclude (or limit) stakeholder input, for example: it may cause loss of credibility of model and model results among academic peers, it's time consuming and costly, the stakeholder group may be biased/self-selected. The model and model results may not be a good representation of the issue and therefore not better than a model that excluded them in the first place. Finally, models built with stakeholder involvement face the challenge of maintaining stakeholder involvement from start to finish. So, one could ask: Why spend all the money and effort on something that has only a short life span and doesn't really solve a problem? There are several answers to this question. Mediated modeling does not claim to solve all problems, but it does solve some very important, and often neglected, problems. Optimally, a mediated modeling project should not stand on its own, but should be embedded in an overall management or research program with the appropriate mandates in place. For example it could be embedded in a "3-step modeling process" (Costanza and Ruth, 1998) that makes the "scoping model" created by the mediated modeling process an input to more elaborate (and academically defensible) modeling efforts. But the mediated modeling process contributes a valuable (and often missing) piece in a complex puzzle. In addition, a scoping model doesn't have to have a short life span when it evolves over the course of a larger program from a scoping model into a "summary" model that incorporates the output of detailed academic models. The stakeholders can still understand this level of complexity and use the scoping or summary model in communications with individuals and groups that don't want to take the time and spend the effort to examine detailed academic models. Finally, the question of which stakeholders should participate remains an open ended one. Stakeholder involvement is time consuming by nature and therefore costly. Looking at the complexity of the two models, an individual could probably come up with similar models produced by the group processes. It takes time to get a diverse group of stakeholders on the same page, to respect each other's position and create a picture and goals for the future where they can coexist. The value of the model does not lie in the model as an end product, but in the process of model construction. Not only do the individual participants learn new aspects about the systems under consideration, but they also learn about and from the other actors in the game. The potential costs to society to not go this route may be even higher than the cost of a mediated modeling project. Between the two extremes of inclusion of everybody and decision making by a very few, there is a wide spectrum thinkable. An adequate level of inclusion should be strived for. We suggest that on this spectrum we should move toward more inclusion rather than exclusion. There are social sciences that study the phenomenon that a stakeholder group may be biased or self-selected. On the one hand it is important to assess the distribution of the participants thoroughly. On the other hand, one has to accept some of the complexities and the dynamics of the real world and make sure that steps in the right direction are taken within these constraints in order to get something done. |