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Policy on the Web: The Climate Change Virtual Policy Network
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This paper analyses policy information on the Web to understand how the hyperlinked organization of webpages, produced by real world, web-enabled policy co mmunities, influences the structure and content of the Web's information supply. These virtual networks of information will be referred to as virtual policy networks (VPN), which are defined as observable patterns of relations among web-enabled policy co mmunities. The organization of virtual teams, social networks and online co mmunities is well documented; however, similar considerations of real world policy co mmunities that are fully established, and then become web-enabled are sparse. This project takes tentative steps towards addressing this dearth in the literature by exa mining the networked relations of the Canadian climate change VPN. The key research questions addressed are what policy actors are participating in the web-based policy com munity, who has the most influence in the virtual climate change do main, and how is information organized.
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... In this project four sectoral responses to climate change adaptation are analyzed including finance, forestry, infrastructure, and transportation. Previous research on the affects of climate change policy on different sectoral VPNs has shown that in Canada the federal government is typically nodal yet levels of internationalization, density and centralization vary considerably (McNutt 2008;McNutt 2010). However as Petricek et al. (2006) warns, state nodality cannot be assumed as competition from other actors and institutions may decrease governments' web-based capacity. ...
Policy capacity in web-based settings is largely the product of nodality, which provides centralized actors with enhanced opportunities to detect information and affect behavior. This paper examines four Canadian virtual policy networks (VPN) currently facing policy challenges associated with climate change adaptation including finance, infrastructure, transportation, and forestry. The four sectors each face specific types of challenges that will presumably influence government’s policy capacity to respond to climate change adaptation, which in turn will affect the state’s nodal positioning in the VPNs. At the macro level governing capacity will vary considerably among these sectors with some more able to affect social behavior and evidence-informed learning, while others will struggle to lead policy discourse and development. It is hypothesized that the Canadian federal government’s nodality, which is shaped by both reputational capital and information credibility, will also be influenced by the nature of actors involved and the degree to which the VPN is internationalized.
... The Web acts as an open-ended environment in which the state can practice governance and advocate policies (De Maeyer 2012, Elgin 2015. Furthermore, it enables direct and reciprocal communication between state institutions, research organizations, businesses, and the general public (McNutt 2008), and offers space for policy deliberation (Martin and Rice 2014) and articulation of critique (Rogers and Marres 2000). ...
The circular economy (CE) is currently generating considerable expectations. The concept describes an aspired future but does not provide clear guidance for policy-making. As policy outcomes often rest on initiatives generated in a bottom-up fashion, our attention must be directed to the ways policies are made accessible and interesting to those who might take the initiative. We claim that on-line publicity plays a key role in this. Our findings from a hyperlink analysis focusing on a government funding call for nutrient recycling in Finland show how multiple versions of the policy topic unfold online, as emergent hyperlink clusters prioritize specific agents, material circuits, and policy visions over others. The topic becomes connected with activities and agendas to create path dependencies and to strengthen existing divisions rather than to advocate change. Thus, we argue that CE policy design must recognize the way policy is shaped through online publicity creation.
... One application of SNA has been recent work on 'virtual policy networks' (VPNs) through the study of weblinks, which signal mutual recognition of membership in a given community (in our case, a policy network) (Barabási, 2014). Mapping these hyperlinks has been used to portray, for example, policy networks around public management reform ((McNutt & Pal, 2011b), women, peace and security (Carpenter & Jose, 2012), and climate change (McNutt, 2008). For the purposes of this research project, we apply SNA to model the relationships of systems of actors interacting at the global level in particular policy fields. ...
Research on diffusion and transfer increasingly relies on the concept of policy networks, but often in inductive, descriptive, and anecdotal ways. This article proposes a more robust method for the comparative analysis of policy networks, a method we term ‘event-focused network analysis’ (EFNA). The method assumes that networks are most clearly revealed in ‘events’ – conferences, meetings, workshops, etc. Databases of participants at these events provide the foundation for social network analysis of the networks of which they are part. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has hundreds of such events annually that are connected to a myriad of policy issues, thus allowing cross-sectoral network comparisons. The article begins with a review and critique of current approaches to network analysis, explains the EFNA approach, and then applies it to anti-corruption networks centred in the OECD. The case study shows the promise of the method, particularly in being able to trace a wider range of actors than is typical, taking us beyond the ‘usual suspects’ in conventional transfer studies.
... In addition to access rates, the habits of those using the Internet have changed. Users are specifically seeking scientific-and policy-related information online (Schroeder, Caldas, Mesch, & Dutton, n.d.) and have formed an active policy network on the Web (McNutt, 2008). Political discourse plays an important role in the blogosphere, with bloggers and blog readers engaging in the exchange of ideas and actively seeking to shape the political agenda, encourage unified action, and initiate mobilization (Pole, 2010). ...
... In addition to access rates, the habits of those using the Internet have changed. Users are specifically seeking scientific-and policy-related information online (Schroeder, Caldas, Mesch, & Dutton, n.d.) and have formed an active policy network on the Web (McNutt, 2008). Political discourse plays an important role in the blogosphere, with bloggers and blog readers engaging in the exchange of ideas and actively seeking to shape the political agenda, encourage unified action, and initiate mobilization (Pole, 2010). ...
New media have changed the way people communicate and transfer information, but their effects on agenda-setting and the transfer of salience of objects and attributes have not been explored empirically. This study utilized a quantitative content analysis to determine how the blogosphere affects the agricultural policy agenda by analyzing a specific piece of policy that has the potential to effect agriculture. Results indicate a significant predictive relationship of the blogosphere agenda, media agenda, interest group agenda, and public agenda to the policy agenda. This adds new information on agenda-setting in an online environment by concluding agenda-setting occurs in new media environments similarly to traditional media environments. Future studies should consider the influence of the blogosphere on the political agenda.
... Network status is granted through the structural positioning of a given actor in relation to all other actors (Coleman and Skogstad 1990). Identifying the most linked-to websites in the inner core provides insight into which organizations or individuals are the most influential in the decision-making process (McNutt 2008;Vedder and Wachbroit 2003). As Jost and Jacob suggest, to be "accepted by the network as an important information source implies influence" (2004,11). ...
Climate journalism gathers, evaluates, selects, and presents information about climate change, its characteristics, causes, and impacts, as well as ways to mitigate it, and distributes them via technical media to general and specialist audiences. It is an important source of information about climate change for many people. Currently, however, the media ecosystem surrounding climate journalism is changing, with economic conditions becoming more strenuous, more communicators joining the debate, and social media changing the affordances of communication. This advanced review synthesizes scholarship on both the status quo and the changes taking place in climate journalism in the Global North and the Global South. While it demonstrates that the scholarship has distinct gaps and biases, it does distill several robust findings. First, it shows that the organizational embedding of climate journalism is changing, with specialist reporters becoming scarce and working under more strenuous conditions and with the emergence of online‐born news media and niche sites specializing in climate journalism. It also suggests that few specialist climate journalists exist in the Global South. Second, it demonstrates that the range of roles available to climate journalists has diversified, with a shift from “gatekeeping” to “curating” roles. Third, it indicates that climate journalists’ relationships with their sources have changed. Elite sources have been, and still are, important, but their composition has shifted from scientists to a broader range of stakeholders. Correspondingly, there seems to be a strong and rising influence of stakeholder PR on climate journalism.
This article is categorized under:
• Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Communication
In 2005, the Ontario government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, both major changes in land use policy designed to preserve greenspaces and combat urban sprawl in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Canada's largest conurbation. This article examines the actors, actor beliefs, and inter-actor alliances in the southern Ontario land use policy subsystem from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Specifically, this paper undertakes an empirical examination of the ACF's Belief Homophily Hypothesis, which holds that inter-actor alliances form on the basis of shared policy-relevant beliefs, creating advocacy coalitions. The analysis finds strong evidence of three advocacy coalitions in the policy subsystem—an agricultural coalition, an environmentalist coalition, and a developers' coalition—as predicted by the hypothesis. However, it also finds equally strong evidence of a cross-coalition coordination network of peak organizations, something not predicted by the Belief Homophily Hypothesis, and in need of explanation within the ACF.
The growing importance of non-state actors in global and transnational politics is a persistent theme in the global governance literature, providing a key motivation for going beyond the older international regime framework. The latter’s stress on intergovernmental negotiation leading to the creation of hard international law and the existence of durable international organizations has been under attack for some time. For every effort at global coordination that proceeded according to the regime model, it seemed there were many more that achieved significant results in other ways. And, as the climate change ‘regime’ clearly demonstrates, even where the model of negotiation, framework convention and protocol was followed to the letter, it is sometimes hard to discern much progress on the ground. Dissentient voices unhappy at the mainstream policy choices proceeded with their own initiatives, altering the calculus of cost and benefits for the main regime actors and introducing new modes of coordination based on their own rules and procedures. The ‘governance’ idea is intended to capture such developments (Okereke et al., 2009; O’Neill, 2009).
I would like to begin with two caveats. First, this critique is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of the Bush Administration's entire environmental record. Rather, the purpose is to illustrate, through selected examples, how this administration abuses science, law, and democratic processes to make bad public policy. Second, I make no claim to objectivity here. My view is that this administration has compiled the worst environmental record of any administration in history. To the extent others see it differently, so be it.
We identify and clarify some distinctions we believe are useful in establishing the reliability of information on the Internet. We begin by examining some of the salient features of information that go into the determination of reliability. In so doing, we argue that we need to distinguish content and pedigree criteria of reliability and that we need to separate issues of reliability of information from the issues of the accessibility and the usability of information. We then turn to an analysis of some common failures to recognize reliability and unreliability. Keywords: epistemology, ethics, information, Internet, reliability, truth.
The analysis of climate change is confronted with large uncertainties that need to be taken into account to arrive at meaningful policy 8 recommendations. The main contribution of economics to this interdisciplinary task is to provide formal frameworks and techniques for 9 analyzing climate policy in the context of uncertainty. This paper will give an overview of existing approaches and findings to provide a 10 broad picture of what economics can contribute to the debate. 11
The Internet, operating as a technologically
embedded laboratory of human activity, provides social scientists with a
new set of analytical tools by which to test and replicate models of
social and political behaviour, with data extrapolated from the
regularities of online activity, organization and information exchange.
This research note demonstrates that virtual policy networks, arrangements
of public interaction between mutually supporting actors that form around
policy activities, exist on the Web. In addition, the note considers
whether or not Canadian virtual policy networks are mimicking their
respective national policy communities through the application of a
methodological approach referred to as link structure analysis. Four
sectorally based networks, including Aboriginal policy, agriculture,
banking and women-centred policy, are analyzed to assess the extent of
virtual policy networks' replication of real world policy
dynamics.
Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the others; (2) provides a clear expression of the way in which a significant portion of the populace feels we should live with one another and with nature; and (3) needs all of the others in order to be sustainable. ‘Clumsy solutions’– policies that creatively combine all opposing perspectives on what the problems are and how they should be resolved – are therefore called for. We illustrate these claims for the issue of global warming.
There have been serious tensions in the Canada-United States relationship in recent years, sparked by both a marked divergence in the domestic and international policy priorities in the two countries, particularly under the Bush and Chrétien administrations, and an obvious lack of rapport between the two leaders. In the environmental sphere, however, the Canada-U.S. relationship has been minimally affected by such friction. In fact, it is argued here that the "enviro nmental interoperability" of the two countries has recently broadened and deepened, and this can be traced to three developments. First, there is a high degree of transgovernmentalism, or effective mid-level working relations among officials on both sides of the border that has become entrenched over decades of cooperation on various environmental issues. Moreover, cross-border scientific and technical relationships between Canadians and Americans have been solidified through the implementation of existing environmental agreements and a burgeoning system of continental-level professional interactions. Finally, there is a thickening network of relationships at the subnational and cross-border regional level that is changing the very nature of Canada-U.S. environmental relations. These subnational and regional relationships are driven more by pragmatic concerns about economic interdependence and shared ecosystems, even a sense of bioregionalism, than by national-level politics.
This article discusses the emergence of experimental Internet research software or 'toolkits' that trace the dynamics of web networking. The author argues that such projects have focused too heavily on web hyperlinks as an indicator of social and political association. The article concludes by offering a broader vision for the analysis of web code, expanding beyond the mapping of HREF tags (hyperlink code) toward an understanding of the larger structure and deployment of all web code and content (including text, images, met tags, robot.txt commands and so on).
The study examines the factors that impact the perceptions of consumers when visiting a nonprofit website. Measures of online communications effectiveness in the for-profit environment are applied to the nonprofit world.
Consumer reactions to two major nonprofit websites provide insight into the relationship between website credibility and attitude toward the site.
The study points to the importance of several credibility measures (particularly those related to site design) that are significantly related to attitude toward the site.
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The paper considers the usability of the World Wide Web in the light of a decade of research into the usability of hypertext and hypermedia systems. The concepts of virtual hierarchies and virtual networks are introduced as a mechanism for alleviating some of the shortcomings inherent in the current implementations of the web, without violating its basic philosophy. It is suggested that virtual hierarchies and virtual networks will assist users to find task-relevant information more easily and quickly and also help web authors to ensure that their pages are targeted at the users who wish to see them.The paper first analyses the published work on hypermedia usability, identifying the assumptions that underlie this research and relating them to the assumptions underlying the web. Some general conclusions are presented about both hypermedia usability principles and their applicability to the web. These results are coupled with problems identified from other sources to produce a requirements list for improving web usability. A possible solution is then presented which utilizes the capabilities of existing distributed information management software to permit web users to create virtual hierarchies and virtual networks. Some ways in which these virtual structures assist searchers to find useful information, and thus help authors to publicize their information more effectively, are described. The explanation is illustrated by examples taken from the GENIE Service, an implementation of some of the ideas. This uses the World Wide Web as a means of allowing global environmental change researchers throughout the world to find data that may be relevant to their research.