Collecting data for social network analysis

If you’ve been to a negotiation site already, or even perhaps if you’ve just seen snippets on videos shared by NGOs, you’ll have been struck by the busyness, with people constantly moving around, huddling in small groups over some document, pulling people aside to get their attention, flicking between their phones or tablets, the people they are with, and perhaps what is going on formally within the negotiating room. Outside, there may be NGOs mobilizing in ways that don’t have any obvious central direction. If you haven’t been to such a negotiation, but are planning to do so, then get ready for the bustle and hubbub, the quick shifts of attention, the pressing of business cards into palms, the oddness of how intense it is even when nothing actually seems to be happening. If this was a site in climate change politics, it will have been particularly intense and busy, but these dynamics are pervasive throughout environmental agreement-making. All of these experiences attest to the centrality of networking as an activity within agreement-making processes. Negotiating sites are sites of networking: of making connections with others for a variety of reasons. The act of networking is a key practice for the negotiators, policymakers, lobbyists, campaigners, and experts involved in the negotiating process: key to how they seek to mobilize ideas, build coalitions, and gain support for their proposals.