Call: EUSN 2021 Panel - Data Gathering for Policy Networks

we are calling for paper proposal abstracts for the European Social Network (EUSN) conference to be hosted on 7-10 September 2021 in Napels, Italy. 

We welcome contributions to the following panel:

Data gathering for policy networks: different approaches, different challenges. 

Panel Description: 

Policy networks scholars draw on different datasets to test hypotheses about policy actors and their behavior (e.g., collaboration), relations, beliefs, and their roles in a policy subsystem. Collecting relational data, like policy networks, is connected to various challenges and different techniques measure different phenomena. Thus, relational data collected via text analysis differ from network data collected by a survey even if it investigates the same set of policy actors. To date, network literature lacks an overview of diverse data types used, systematically assessing typical strengths and weaknesses, as well as their most appropriate areas of use. This, however could be helpful to understand what type of network data serves best to operationalize specific theoretical concepts. Further, such an overview would provide some practical guidelines for specific research projects in the context of concrete questions related to time, personnel, or other substantive constraints. Against this backdrop, this session promotes papers, which are questioning the different methods of data gathering for policy networks. Thus, we specifically look for papers, which compare different sources of network data, elaborate on the multiple ways to gather them (e.g., hyperlink data versus survey data) and contribute to a discussion about strengths and weaknesses of different methods of data collection.

Organizers: Marlene Kammerer, University of Bern (marlene.kammerer@ipw.unibe.ch), Ruth Wiedemann, University of Bern (ruth.wiedemann@ipw.unibe.ch). If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Please submit paper proposals via the EUSNs electronic platform (http://www.eusn2021.unina.it/callforpapers.html) before May, 23 2021. We will make a selection of papers for the panel and you will receive a notification of acceptance by June 13, 2021.