Constructing visual policy narratives in new media: the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, advocacy organizations are routing their communications through social media platforms. One notable difference from traditional communication outlets is the easy inclusion of visual elements within social media messaging. One such example of the turn toward the visual in online communication is the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), during which environmental groups livestreamed protests and posted images of demonstrators staring down police. This study examines the use and consequences of visual-based ‘new media’ platforms by applying the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to the case of DAPL. The NPF focuses our attention on the role of policy stories, acknowledging that narratives have impacts on policy beliefs and actions. I compare social media messaging that includes imagery to that which does not, exploring creation of policy narratives as defined through the NPF. I do so by drawing on a dataset of more than 580 Twitter posts by five environmental advocacy groups from July 2016 through October 2017. My findings speak to the ways in which images and accompanying text interact to form more robust narratives. Visual tweets are also more likely to stimulate greater sharing behavior. These results have implications for interest group communications strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• Twitter
• narrative
• narrative policy framework
• environment
• Dakota Access Pipeline

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Megan Nickel for her invaluable research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In November 2017, Twitter increased the limit on tweets from 140 to 280 characters. Given that the data collection for this study concluded in October 2017, I reference a 140-character limit throughout the paper.

2 https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com.

3 Available upon request from the author.

4 The observed variance in the dependent variable is larger than the mean for retweets (M = 148.64, SD = 159.36) and likes (M = 164.21, SD = 197.54).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica E. Boscarino

Jessica Boscarino is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Marist College. Her research interests center on the strategic behavior of advocacy groups as they communicate their policy beliefs and goals. She is especially interested in the use of policy narratives to shift problem definitions, link policy solutions to issues, and confront policy opponents. Her work explores these themes in the environmental and energy policy realms. Her publications include articles in journals such as Policy Studies Journal, Review of Policy Research, and Policy Sciences. [email: [email protected]].