2026-11-26 –, Cullen Room
One of the challenges for mixed-method research is how to integrate findings from diverse methodological traditions. Network-based methods can identify patterns of associations among actors, issues, and concepts, but provide limited insight into how these associations are negotiated and sustained. Qualitative approaches, meanwhile, can reveal meanings, yet often difficult to connect systematically across large and complex relational settings. This paper proposes to addresses this methodological challenge through a framework that integrates semantic network analysis, cartography of controversies, and boundary theory.
The framework was developed through a doctoral study of smart city development in Australia. The first component employs semantic network analysis across multiple datasets, including documents, news coverages, and codebases of government-funded and open source smart city (OSSC) initiatives. Rather than treating semantic networks as an end point, they were used as exploratory map to identify both shared conceptual spaces and conceptually distinct areas associated with different actors. Across datasets, concepts such as ‘open data’ and ‘citizen-centric’ emerged as common reference points linking government agencies and OSSC initiatives. At the same time, the networks revealed divergent thematic clusters. Government-funded projects commonly associated with sustainability, energy efficiency, public safety, and urban service delivery, while OSSC initiatives tended to emphasis democracy, accountability, food security, sustainable agriculture, and community empowerment.
These patterns of convergence and divergence informed the second component of the framework: qualitative case studies using cartography of controversies. Following statements, actors, issues, documents, technologies, and institutional arrangements over time, the case studies traced how shared concepts were interpreted and enacted. While semantic networks suggested broad agreement around ideas such as openness and citizen-centric development, qualitative tracing revealed substantial differences in meaning. For example, government agencies frequently framed citizens as service users, consultees, or sources of urban data, whit participation occurring primarily through consultation processes and sensor-enabled urban management. In contrast, OSSC organisations positioned citizens as active participants in oversight, accountability, and knowledge production. Likewise, while both endorsed open data, they framed and practiced differently. Government agencies primarily associated open data with Open Government Data (OGD) and administrative procedures, whereas OSSC organisations linked both OGD and Freedom of Information to transparency, accountability, and the strengthening of community capacity.
To integrate these findings, the paper draws on the concepts of boundary work and boundary objects. boundary object explains how concepts such as open data and citizen-centric can operate as shared reference points across heterogenous communities while remaining sufficiently flexible to accommodate divergent interpretations. Boundary work provides a means of analysing how actors construct, defend, challenge, and reconfigure the meanings attached to these concepts. Together, they offer an analytical bridge between network-level patterns and qualitative accounts of negotiation. Rather than treating quantitative and qualitative findings as separate streams of evidence, the framework uses boundary theory to explain how apparent conceptual convergence can coexist with substantive differences in interpretation and practice.
This paper contributes to methodological discussions on mixed-methods approaches in three ways. First, it demonstrates how semantic network analysis can be used to identify potential boundary objects and guide qualitative inquiry. Second, it shows how cartography of controversies can reveal the processes through which shared concepts acquire different meanings across actor groups. Third, it illustrates how boundary work and boundary object can function as integrative devices for synthesising network patterns and interpretive forms of analysis. By linking networks to negotiations, the proposed framework offers a transferable approach for researchers seeking to combine network analysis and qualitative methods in the study of collaboration, governance, and socio-technical change.
Xiaolan Cai is a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra whose research focuses on civic technology, knowledge production, and digital participation. Using social network analysis and computational methods, she studies collaborative networks across diverse domains, including civic technology and scientific research. Her work draws on communication studies, science and technology studies (STS), and urban studies.