Seminar on the Applications of Network Analysis in Public Discourse Research Held by HSE’s Working Group

On June 18th at 6:00 PM, the Working Group "The Discursive Dimension of Foreign-Policy Decision-Making: A Comparative Study of Change and Continuity in Russia’s Public Discourse" hosted a workshop led by Artem Maltsev, lecturer at the Department of Politics and Governance of HSE University.

On June 18th at 6:00 PM, the Working Group "The Discursive Dimension of Foreign-Policy Decision-Making: A Comparative Study of Change and Continuity in Russia’s Public Discourse" hosted a workshop led by Artem Maltsev, lecturer at the Department of Politics and Governance of HSE University.

The workshop began by examining strategies for selecting units of analysis in discursive acts and the different levels of abstraction used to operationalize them. Participants discussed these concepts in the context of leading articles utilizing discourse network analysis and, more broadly, qualitative research methods.

Following this, A. M. Maltsev demonstrated the applications of network analysis in social sciences and international relations research, both quantitative and qualitative. He then conducted a demonstration, based on a pilot study using the Working Group's database, to illustrate the process of network creation, by creating a discursive net of invariant speech acts in 2000. The seminar ended with the discussion of the potential of network analysis to better understand the dynamic relationship between public discourse and foreign policy shifts.