Think Tanks in cyberspace: How organisations are adapting and wielding influence in the hybrid media system

Questions to be addressed by this research:
Are think tanks still relevant in the digital era, where citizens and citizen groups can bypass institutions and affect power directly? Is such expert knowledge valuable in today's fragmented media environment?
How have think tanks remade themselves to hold on to or even increase their influence and power in democratic systems? How have think tanks traditionally attempted to exert influence on the policy process and has this changed?
What digital methods have think tanks employed and are they learning from groups such as political parties and campaigns, lobbying firms, news websites and pressure groups? Is the model of what a think tank looks like fundamentally changing as a result of this?
How have think tanks adopted and used social media to increase their power and influence?
What are the key characteristics of the TTs that are having success or losing ground in this new environment?
In addition, the work will explore the history of how think tanks operated and wielded influence historically to establish how they have lost power and influence, and how it is being reclaimed.
Proposed Methodology:
The study will use interviews with key figures in the think tanks studied and those in power they hope to influence such as Members of Parliament or members of Congress. Interviews will be the best method of obtaining qualitative data about how think tanks seek to influence the powerful and the effect they have on the powerful. Observation of the digital methods employed and how they interact with older media methods will also be carried out, particularly around the release of important reports or pamphlets that seek to influence government policy. This will probably take place both before and after consultation with the think tank, enabling the researcher to draw hypotheses from the observations carried out, formulate questions from this research, and then reapply what has been learned at a later stage. There is also the potential to carry out a mixed method element to the study by examining data from the digital output of the think tanks in the period studied. A quantitative element to the study will allow for a data driven analysis of the methods employed by the think tanks, allowing for the study to examine the comparative success and influence of the think tanks studied.
Think tanks do not operate in isolation, but adapt to the incentives and opportunities provided by their media systems and political systems. While single-country case studies cannot, by definition, deal with these variations, cross-country comparative research can test hypotheses on the ways in which institutional variables shape the conduct of think tanks and its impact. Cross-national comparative ethnographies are less utilised than large-scale quantitative studies or single-country ethnographies, but are useful for comparing and contextualising topics while examining how they interact with local practices (Jorgensen, 2015). This is particularly important in the case of the United States, where much of digital practice is first seen, but does not always get adopted wholesale in the same way as it is used at its American origin (Vaccari, 2013). The United Kingdom will provide a wealth of data being the country of origin of the study and providing ease of access, but Canada is also proposed for study as an interesting 'halfway' point between the two nations - geographically North American with close relations to the United States, but heavily influenced by its recent history as a British dominion that uses the Westminster parliamentary system. The inclusion of Canada will also offer the benefit of studying a nation that will be under a progressive government while the US and the UK will be under conservative governments during the period of data collection. The extent to which different think tanks can influence policies and debates is to no small degree a function of who is in power.