A timeline of the controversy map was created by identifying the date (year and month) of each source document URL in the “corpus of quotes”. This was simply done by visiting each website and identifying the date when the document was published. The date identification of source document URLs was limited to those listed in the “corpus of quotes” as they link to the analyses made in previous movements and searching all 1,100 source documents would be a time intensive task.

A total of 69 unique source document URLs were listed in the corpus of quotes and the date of each URL was listed in an excel spreadsheet. Of the 69 source document URLs searched, only 5 did not display dates. The date of each source document URL was added to the linked quote in the Debate Graph, and an overview of all dates was illustrated in a scatterplot.

Density Design's "Raw" platform was used to produce the visualization of meta-issues over time. A word count for each meta-issue in each year provide the underlying data for the visualization.