Advocacy groups use Twitter to build policy narratives featuring heroes, villains and victims.

Until recently for advocacy groups, influencing public opinion meant press releases, newspaper articles and emails. Now, social media gives such groups the ability to advocate much more widely and at lower cost. In new research, Kuhika Gupta, Joseph T. Ripberger, and Wesley Wehde look at how opposing advocacy groups construct narratives via social media. They find that pro and anti-nuclear groups used individual tweets to construct policy narratives featuring heroes, villains and victims.