Two-mode dynamic discourse network of Germany's nuclear energy phase-out (Haunss and Hollway 2023)

Source: R/data_irps.R

Following the 11 March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, there was a vigorous public debate in Germany about the future of nuclear energy. This network captures the discourse established by 337 actors, including individual politicians, experts, parties, and the media, and their claims about nuclear energy and German nuclear energy policy. These claims were with respect to 54 concepts coded, and could be supportive or critical, and could also be repeated.

data(irps_nuclear)

Format

#> -- # German nuclear discourse network ------------------------------------------
#> # A dynamic, labelled, signed, two-mode network of 337 speakers and 54 concepts
#> and 1164 claim ties (16 parallel) from 2011-03-11 to 2011-06-30
#>
#> -- Nodes
#> # A tibble: 391 x 10
#>   label         mode  active politician govt  coalition office org   party power
#>   <chr>         <chr> <lgl>  <lgl>      <lgl> <lgl>     <lgl>  <chr> <chr> <int>
#> 1 VfEW          spea~ TRUE   FALSE      FALSE NA        FALSE  VfEW  <NA>      0
#> 2 Angela Merkel spea~ TRUE   TRUE       TRUE  TRUE      TRUE   CDU   31        2
#> 3 Sunday Times  spea~ TRUE   FALSE      FALSE NA        FALSE  Sund~ <NA>      0
#> 4 SPD           spea~ TRUE   TRUE       FALSE FALSE     FALSE  SPD   32        1
#> 5 Norbert Rött~ spea~ TRUE   TRUE       TRUE  TRUE      TRUE   CDU   31        1
#> 6 Torsten Krau~ spea~ TRUE   FALSE      FALSE NA        FALSE  Die ~ <NA>      0
#> # i 385 more rows
#>
#> -- Ties
#> # A tibble: 1,164 x 5
#>    from    to time       weight default
#>   <int> <int> <date>      <int> <lgl>
#> 1     1   338 2011-03-11     -1 FALSE
#> 2     2   339 2011-03-12      1 TRUE
#> 3     3   340 2011-03-13     -1 FALSE
#> 4     4   341 2011-03-13      1 TRUE
#> 5     2   342 2011-03-13     -1 TRUE
#> 6     5   343 2011-03-13      1 TRUE
#> # i 1,158 more rows
#>

Details

Each tie is one claim by one speaker about one concept on one day, so the network records a stream of events and not a panel. The day is held in a 'time' column, and whether the claim was supportive or critical in a 'weight' column of 1 or -1.

A speaker may claim the same concept on more than one day, and 152 of the speaker-concept pairs do, one of them 15 times. Such claims follow one another rather than coexist, so they are repetitions and not parallel ties. Eight speaker-concept pairs make more than one claim on a single day, which tie_is_parallel() marks, covering 16 of the 1164 ties.

References

Haunss Sebastian, James Hollway. 2023. "Multimodal mechanisms of political discourse dynamics and the case of Germany’s nuclear energy phase-out". Network Science, 11(2):205-223. doi:10.1017/nws.2022.31