Understanding Social Media Advocacy: Advocacy Communication on the Violence Against Women Act

This study examines agenda setting, framing, and the concepts of social media advocacy and mobilizing information related to the Violence Against Women Act through social network analysis and topic modeling of big data. Tweets on the Violence Against Women Act between 2019 and 2022 were examined. The network analysis showed the predictive effects of the issue ownership network on policy initiatives. The importance of addressing urgency, key policy details, and blame attribution related to an issue was also found. Mobilizing information through hashtags and hyperlinks was effective when they were symbolic and simple. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.