stanceand

stanceand is a web-based platform and data model designed to capture, organize, and visualize the positions people and organizations take on public issues. The project aims to facilitate transparent documentation of stances, enabling researchers, journalists, educators, and policymakers to map alignment and disagreement across topics and over time.

Overview: The system distinguishes issues from stances and uses a structured representation that includes the issue, the position (for example, support, oppose, or neutral), qualifiers such as strength or certainty, and provenance. Users can attach statements, sources, and evidence to each stance, and assign stances to actors such as individuals, organizations, or communities. Time-series data illustrate how stances evolve and how different actors relate to one another.

Data model: Core entities include Issue, Stance, Actor, Source, and Evidence. Relationships record which actors hold which stances on which issues, with metadata for when the stance was stated and how confidently it was sourced. An API supports machine-readable exports, while dashboards and embeddable widgets enable integration into newsrooms and classrooms.

Governance and ethics: stanceand emphasizes transparent data practices, citation integrity, and privacy considerations. It provides guidelines to mitigate bias, prevent manipulation, and encourage constructive discourse.

Applications: The platform is used for journalistic stance tracking, academic discourse analysis, policy stakeholder mapping, and civic education. It is designed as a descriptive tool rather than an advocacy platform.

Limitations: As a community-driven database, data quality depends on contributor diligence, source quality, and consistent tagging. The system does not determine truth; it records perceptions and documented claims.

See also: stance, public opinion, discourse analysis, issue mapping.