Policy and Politics on the Web: Virtual Policy Networks and Climate Change

Abstract

This paper analyses policy information on the Web to understand how the hyperlinked organization of webpages, produced by real world, web-enabled policy communities, influences the structure and content of the Web’s information supply. These virtual networks of information will be referred to as virtual policy networks (VPN), which are defined as observable patterns of relations among web-enabled policy communities. The organization of virtual teams, social networks and online communities is well documented; however, similar considerations of real world policy communities that are fully established, and then become web-enabled are sparse. This project takes tentative steps towards addressing this dearth in the literature by examining the networked relations of the Canadian climate change VPN. The key research question addressed in this project is whether or not the Canadian climate change VPN is structurally and relationally analogous to the real world climate change policy community. As virtual policy works are produced by real world web-enabled policy communities it is hypothesized that the Canadian climate change VPN will mimic the real world policy community’s patterns of communication and organization.