Submission to the panel ‘From Texts to Networks: Semantic, Socio-Semantic, and Discourse Networks’
During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists became important advisors to policymakers and the public and were important participants in media debates. This article combines theoretical insights from the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and Social Identities in the Policy Process Theory (SIPP), to study scientists’ narratives in relation to other actors’ narratives. According to SIPP, actors that belong to the same social groups, for example professional groups, share notions of policies, which results in shared policy stories. Building on this assumption, the article studies if scientists can be identified as a cohesive group with shared narratives in public discourse, and how their narratives were taken up, when scientific advice was implemented. Empirically, the article studies policy debates about face masks in French- and German-speaking Switzerland in the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. It combines standard NPF coding with discourse network analysis. NPF coding, which mostly focuses on the quantitative identification of structural narrative elements within policy debates, is well suited to study narratives from a network perspective due to its quantitative approach to narratives. To answer the research questions, two networks are analysed: First, a narrator-level network is analysed, in which the narrators are the nodes which are connected through the use of the same narrative elements. Using a community detection algorithm and descriptive network measures, the position of scientists in the network will be described. Second, narrative-level networks are analysed, in which narrative elements are the nodes which are connected through the use in the same narratives. Comparing the narrative networks between different actors and over time (before and after policy change), allows us to compare the narratives of different actors, and to find out if narratives of scientists are taken up if their advice is implemented.
