Interpreting Hashtag Politics

Why do policy actors create branded policy ideas like Big Society and does launching them on Twitter extend or curtail their life? This book reveals how policy analysis can adapt in an increasingly mediatised to offer interpretive insights into the life and death of policy ideas in an era of hashtag politics.

"To understand the dynamics of policy making, take social media seriously. Nice work by Stephen Jeffares illustrating how a new generation of policy scholars will redraw the boundaries of a discipline. - Professor Maarten Hajer, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam and PBL Netherlands Environmental Agency, the Netherlands. "Interpreting Hashtag Politics is topical, lively and very well written. It fully engages the reader and raises important issues in the study of public policy " - Peter John, School of Public Policy, University College London, UK Jeffares' book fills a huge void in social science theory and research in a digital era. He thoughtfully draws from policy and political science theory, to construct a conceptual framework for understanding, researching, and interpreting the deluge of social media posts that discuss or aim to change public policy. - Sherry Emery, Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA "Interpreting Hashtag politics fills a really important gap in the literature and is comprehensive in the way that it pulls together a range of different ideas and synthesises them in an accessible and relevant way" - Helen Dickinson, Melbourne School of Government, University of Melbourne, Australia

Stephen Jeffares is a lecturer at INLOGOV, School of Government and Society, University of Birmingham UK. He is co-author of Hybrid Governance with Chris Skelcher and Helen Sullivan. His work draws on text analytics and Q methodology to understand changing debates surrounding public policy and public services.