E-Advocacy Among Intermediary Organizations: Brokering Knowledge Through Blogs

• In Event: 31.052 - Advocacy Networks and Intermediaries in Educational Policy: Local, National, and Global Perspectives

Abstract

The call for reputable evidence on which to build educational policy in the United States has created a veritable marketplace of ideas. In this landscape, intermediary organizations (IOs) have assumed the role of knowledge brokers to policy actors and the public at large ([IDENTIFYING INFORMATION REMOVED], 2011). Operating in myriad forms, such as foundations, advocacy groups, think tanks, academic research networks, policy groups, and journalists, IOs are gaining traction as key players in advocacy and policymaking in the U.S. public education sector. To maintain such a presence, IOs are increasingly using blogs to broker evidence concerning key “incentivist” policies ([IDENTIFYING INFORMATION REMOVED], 2009) such as vouchers, charter schools, teacher pay-for-performance, and Parent Trigger ([IDENTIFYING INFORMATION REMOVED], 2014). Advocacy groups, such as Parent Revolution; higher profile outfits, such as EdWeek and Huffington Post; as well as individuals with branded blogs, such as Mark Weber’s Jersey Jazzman, Jennifer Berkshire’s Edushyster, and Jason France’s Crazy Crawfish, are engaging almost entirely in “E-Advocacy,” promoting and disseminating evidence via their online blog platforms.

This analysis will broaden our understanding of knowledge brokering in the blogosphere. Focusing specifically on charter schools, we report on forthcoming findings regarding the following questions:

1. Who is blogging, and for what intended purposes?
2. What, and how, do bloggers treat evidence?
3. How are blogs being treated as evidence among policy actors?

Echo chambers ([IDENTIFYING INFORMATION REMOVED], 2009) and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) (Sabatier, 1993) frame our analysis. The ACF suggests that a policy “subsystem” consists of a range of actors and organizations, concerned with a particular public issue, who play pivotal roles in knowledge brokering and policymaking (Sabatier, 1993). The ACF offers an opportunity to understand the placement and penetration of the blogosphere in the charter school “echo chamber” of evidence, in which a “a small but defined set of studies is repeatedly cited” ([IDENTIFYING INFORMATION REMOVED], 2014, p. 285).

METHODOLOGY
As part of a larger study focusing on research use among policymakers, this mixed methods analysis draws upon data gathered from blogs, interviews, and research reports. Data collection takes place from August 2011 to December 2014. We use a protocol to document the issues, regions, citations, evidence, and links in around 300 blog entries across 41 blogs. We also conduct open-ended interviews with ten bloggers and policymakers to understand bloggers’ approach to knowledge brokering and the role of blogs in policymakers’ work. Further, we track research reports cited by policymakers and bloggers. Using an open coding system, we selectively sample the entire set of blog, interview and document data to uncover themes pertaining specifically to charter schools in order to understand knowledge brokering in the blogosphere.

SIGNIFICANCE
The blogosphere’s role in the proliferation and diversification of advocacy networks is understudied and important. This pilot analysis expands our understanding of relationships between policymakers and bloggers, new approaches to “effective advocacy,” and features of E-advocacy networks within U.S. educational policymaking.

Authors

• Elise Castillo, University of California - Berkeley

• Priya Goel La Londe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Stephen Owens, University of Georgia - Athens

• Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia

• Janelle T. Scott, University of California - Berkeley

• Christopher A. Lubienski, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign