New Publication: Risk issue adoption in an online social movement field

The article "Risk issue adoption in an online social movement field" was recently published in the Information, Communications & Society Journal. The study explores further conceptualisation and empirically investigates issue adoption by the Online Environmental Movement, through analysing structural position (networks) of actors and their responses to emerging threats (the nanoscience and technology risk issue).

One of the findings of the study is that, while less central organisations (challengers) tend to innovate, dominants -i.e. organisations well positioned within a network- tend to adopt the risk issue in a secondary stage.

The study, authored by Mathieu O'Neil (University of Canberra) and Robert Ackland, utilises hyperlink network datasets, collected via VOSON and the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.