Issue networks

Issue networks are constellations of loosely connected individual or collective actors who discuss a particular issue or topic. These networks are characterized by their fluidity, with actors tuning in and out of the discourse based on their shared interests. The empirical study of issue networks has gained traction with the development of online public spheres on the Internet and on social media. Examples are the formation of civil society coalitions and social movements around social issues such as environmental policies, civil rights, or public health. In this chapter, we introduce scholars to the empirical study of such online issue networks. Key challenges are choosing the entry points into data collection and defining the boundaries of the network. Data collection of issue networks is usually either driven by an actor-centered or an issue-centered approach. First, we introduce early actor-centered approaches operationalizing issue networks as hyperlink networks, the most common approach being a snowball sample starting from a predefined set of seed pages representing key actors in the issue field. We then give examples on how this approach has been enriched by text analytic tools, and how it has been transferred recently to study issue networks on social media such as Telegram and YouTube. Second, we describe the collection of hashtag networks from Twitter as the generic example for an issue-centered approach. Here, sampling draws on posts mentioning a certain hashtag and accounts engaging with this hashtag and with each other. We show how this principle can be applied to other platforms such as TikTok and to studying cross-platform issue networks.