Networks, Knowledge Brokers, and the Public Policymaking Process

Social network analysis provides a meaningful lens for advancing a more nuanced understanding of the communication networks and practices that bring together policy advocates and practitioners in their day-to-day efforts to broker evidence into policymaking processes. 

This book advances knowledge brokerage scholarship and methodology as applied to policymaking contexts, focusing on the ways in which knowledge and research are utilized, and go on to influence policy and practice decisions across domains, including communication, health and education. There is a growing recognition that knowledge brokers – key intermediaries – have an important role in calling attention to research evidence that can facilitate the successful implementation of evidence-informed policies and practices. The chapters in this volume focus explicitly on the history of knowledge brokerage research in these contexts and the frameworks and methodologies that bridge these disparate domains. The contributors to this volume offer useful typologies of knowledge brokerage and explicate the range of causal mechanisms that enable knowledge brokers’ influence on policymaking. The work included in this volume responds to this emerging interest  by comparing, assessing, and delineating social network approaches to knowledge brokerage across domains.

The book is a useful resource for students and scholars of social network analysis and policymaking, including in health, communication, public policy and education policy.

This edited collection provides a major contribution our understanding of the use of research evidence in policy making. Weber and Yanovitzky have curated a fascinating set of accounts of social network analysis as a tool for exploring knowledge brokerage and policymaking. The collection helps us to move forward both in terms of research methods for this important emerging area of scholarship and also in terms of our analysis of knowledge brokerage within complex systems.  I shall be keeping a copy on my shelf and look forward to sharing it with my students and colleagues in years to come.

-Annette Boaz, Professor of Health and Social Care Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK

Relationships shape what we know and how we share information, and conversely what knowledge and individuals are isolated and excluded from social systems. Knowledge brokers, Networks, and the Policy Process brings together a collection of essays and empirical studies that add much-needed ideas to our understanding of how brokers of knowledge, individual and organizational networks, and the policy process interact. The range of theoretical and analytic approaches examined will help us better navigate evidence use in power structures, nested structures, and politics varied policy areas. This book is a must read for those who have not yet discovered the critical role knowledge brokers and networks play in the many facets of policymaking. 

-Kimberly DuMont, Vice President, AIR Equity Initiative, American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Researchers have for some time considered how knowledge is utilized in policymaking, but less is known about the oil that lubricates the transfer of information in the policymaking machinery.  In this illuminating volume, Weber and Yanovitzky assemble leading thinkers to consider the role of knowledge brokers in facilitating movements of information through policy networks around various but related topics — education, immigration, nutrition, healthcare, and the timely issue of misinformation.  These outstanding scholars provide us with methodological breakthroughs that shed light on types of knowledge brokering, transactions, preferences, and behaviors of network actors in think tanks, the media, research and policymaking. Networks, Knowledge Brokers, and the Public Policymaking Process advances the field not only on the structural issues of networks and knowledge brokering on different issues, but even on the nature of knowledge on these issues.

-Christopher Lubienski, Professor of Education Policy, Indiana University

Using social network analysis, this book demystifies how research makes it way into public policy and shines a bright light on the knowledge brokers who make it happen.  Network analyses enable us to see the complex web of relationships between researchers, policymakers, advocates, think tanks, journalists, and the public that shapes how research is applied in policy. Spanning health and education policy, the chapter authors describe different types of knowledge brokers, ways to identify them in the policy ecosystem, and how to understand their roles in spreading research ideas in policy circles.  They also provide keen insights into strategies for building more robust networks that connect research and policy.  This is the authoritative text on how to apply network analysis to improving the use of research evidence in policy.

-Vivian Tseng, Senior Vice President, Program William T. Grant Foundation

Matthew Weber (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Associate Professor of Communication at Rutgers University’s School of Communication & Information. Matthew is a computational social scientist and an expert on media ecosystems, organizational dynamics and the use of Big data in research. His research explores processes of organizational change and adaptation, with a focus on understanding how organizations navigate complex information ecosystems in order to develop evidence-informed policies and policymaking processes. Matthew’s work has been widely published in leading academic journals, as well as in the popular press, and is funded by grants from a number of federal agencies including the National Science Foundation.

Itzhak Yanovitzky (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Communication at Rutgers University’s School of Communication & Information. His program of research explores effective mechanisms for improving the dissemination and implementation of evidence-informed policies and practices and building the capacity of community organizations to communicate effectively about health and wellness issues. Dr. Yanovitzky is an expert in the area of behavior change, public policymaking and translational science, and is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication.