Coding communications across time: Documenting changes in interaction patterns across adopter categories

Abstract

AbstractGLOBALink, a large online network of tobacco control professionals, was active in the promotion of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control treaty, an international treaty aimed at reducing the global burden of tobacco-related death and disease. We examined and compared the roles that different countries served in the GLOBALink community during FCTC negotiation and ratification. Previous studies of FCTC ratification found the process adhered to a diffusion of innovation model (Valente et al., 2015). We followed that work by conducting content analyses of discussion messages posted by GLOBALink members representing different countries. Based on the time when they ratified the FCTC, each country was labeled by one of the four adoption stages of the diffusion model and we investigated the amount of shared word use between the different stages. A goodness-of-fit chi-squared test indicated that content was not shared in an expected manner between stages (χ2 = 11,856.45, N = 51,447, p < 0.001). A deeper look at the specific words shared between countries within and between adoption stages provided insight into how interactions between certain countries might have served to support the ratification process.