Why do leading advocacy organizations in transnational networks construe certain global problems, but not others, as international issues? How do certain issues rise to global prominence while other social problems fall by the wayside? The study will answer this question by collecting data on the rise and fall of issues in the transnational human rights network. First, it will capture variation in the human rights issue agenda through surveys and interviews with human rights activists, and analysis of advocacy websites. Second, it will explore reasons for this variation through a series of focus groups with activists from leading organizations in the human rights network. Participants will be asked about what is and is not on the human rights agenda; how this changes over time, and why. These data will yield insights as to how ideas move through and (sometimes) gain footholds in transnational communities of practice.
Significant numbers of Masters and Ph.D. students from the University of Pittsburgh and Carleton University will be trained to conduct interviews and focus groups, as well as in the systematic use of qualitative data analysis software and scientific methods for reaching vailid inferences about large, unstructured text datasets. This project will integrate rigorous, computer-assisted qualitatitive methods into the study of transnational networkds.
