Disrupting and Leveraging: Strategic Mapping of Social and Content Networks

• In Event: What Does It Take to Build on Educators’ Expertise? Exploring Critical Problems of Representation, Relationships, and Scalability

Abstract

Purpose

This year, we are called to dismantle racial injustice and construct educational possibilities. Indeed, there is an abundance of organizations throughout the education landscape constructing the knowledge needed to transform education. However, mobilizing and coordinating that knowledge effectively throughout all research, practice, and policy communities has been challenging. As disinformation is systematically employed to reverse hard-fought progress, maximizing coordination across parties working toward more equitable experiences and outcomes has never been more crucial.

Researchers and other organizations that create resources with and for practitioners and policymakers struggle to mobilize their knowledge broadly (Authors, 2023). Therefore, our work is guided by the following question: How can the knowledge shared across social networks be mapped for actionable use by researchers and intermediary organizations (i.e., brokers) working toward equity in education?

Perspectives

Knowledge mobilization is an iterative and social process involving interactions among different groups or contexts (researchers, policymakers, practitioners, third-party agencies, community members) to improve the broader education system (Cooper, 2014). Informal and formal social networks and brokers have been found to facilitate and constrain the exchange of resources (e.g., Authors, 2012; Brown et al., 2016). However, the contexts and purposes for which knowledge is assembled, synthesized, and translated also matter (Moss, 2013). Therefore, this study examines how mapped content and social networks can support brokers in mobilizing knowledge toward greater. equity.

Methods & Data

We conducted 55 hours of semi-structured interviews with organizations that provide professional development and other resources to education systems (i.e., brokers), determining their needs and interests. Through analysis of these data, we generated Twitter search terms to capture more than 500,000 relevant posts from over 250,000 unique users. Using social network analysis, computational linguistics (e.g., topic modeling, opinion mining, part-of-speech tagging), and generative Artificial Intelligence, we generated social networks, content maps and metrics for each organization. We then observed representatives from each organization as they reviewed and made sense of the maps and metrics.

Findings

Individuals from organizations that aim to mobilize knowledge between research, policy, and practice used the content and social network maps presented to them to:
● Discover the patterned ways resources moved throughout networked communities that ranged from silos to densely connected.
● Identify individuals well-positioned to broker knowledge to particular clustered communities to form ongoing relationships
● Gather new knowledge from clustered communities that were previously unknown
● Understand the language being used by different clustered communities to engage about topics in education
● Adjust the language of their own resources for more effective uptake within particular clustered communities
● Catalyze strategies for mobilization knowledge

Significance

In an era when disinformation can move efficiently through networks, the field of education must improve the mobilization of equity-focused and evidence-based resources to those who can use and implement them effectively. Partnering with organizations that effectively share knowledge can enable the development of tools and techniques that can foster and enhance the mobilization of knowledge. These tools can support the development of relationships to sustain and expand the creation and dissemination of high-quality resources.

Authors

• Mimi Lockton, University of California - San Diego

• Alan J. Daly, University of California - San Diego

• Anita Caduff, University of Michigan

• Martin Rehm, University of Southern Denmark