Social Networks, Culture Wars, and School Board Recalls: A Case Study of Loudoun County Schools

• In Event: Social Network Tools for Twitter Analysis

Abstract

In 2020 the field of education was caught by surprise when there was a sudden influx of new policy ideas from the political right. Once sporadically attended board meetings soon became overrun with heated discussions over issues such as reopening schools, LGBTQ+ rights, and Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) soon became ground zero for these culture wars (Natanson, 2021). On June 22, 2021, an LCPS school board meeting caught national attention when it erupted into chaos over these issues. This was followed by the launch of school board recall campaign led by Fight for Our Schools, an organization formed by Ian Prior, a former Trump administration official, that describes itself as fighting the “parent revolution”.
The objective of this paper is to examine the conversations on Twitter regarding the recall campaign at LCPS. We first assess the extent to which issues became “bundled” as the recall conversations progressed. We then examine patterns of interaction between local and national actors and explore how their discussions influenced the conversations taking place.
Methods, Theory, and Data:
This study uses social network analysis to examine how individuals interacted and shaped the conversation on Twitter. Based on the scraped tweets (N=31,511) related to the LCPS recall in June 2021 (details mentioned in paper 1), we use SNA to identify Ian Prior as both the critical actor and policy entrepreneur connecting local and national actors. Additionally, we use the Narrative Policy Framework to examine the content of these tweets, a policy theory to uncover the importance of narratives in the policy process (Shanahan et al., 2017).
Findings:
Preliminary findings suggest strong evidence of issue bundling by those leading the recall campaign. This means that as the conversation progressed, key actors in the network introduced additional “culture war” issues. Other members of the network followed their lead and also incorporated these additional issues into their tweets. This led to an increase in the number of issues being incorporated into the recall conversations, often invoking multiple in a single tweet. Recall campaign leaders may have seen themselves as losing , and thus used issue bundling as a strategy expand the scope of conflict (e.g. to attract more individuals) (Schattschneider, 1960). Figures below show examples of bundling.
Significance:
Between 2006 and 2020, there was an average of 23 school board recall efforts a year (Camera, 2021). This has changed drastically, as in 2021 alone, there were 92 recall efforts, with this showing no sign of stopping in 2022 (Ballotpedia, 2022). The national attention focused on LCPS likely aided in increasing the number of school board recalls across the country, as Fox News ran 78 news segments on CRT in this district alone from March to June 2021 (Gertz, 2021). It is important for us to understand how the conversation behind these recall unfolded. As school districts try to reshape the classroom based on cultural and moral ideas, this will ultimately have strong implications for changes in classroom practices, impacting teachers, the public, and future policy.

Authors

• Ariell R. Bertrand, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Yi-Chih Chiang, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amy Cummings, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca Jacobsen, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author