Educational technology has been a growing feature of state education policymaking in Sweden since the start of the 1980s, during the past two decades also as part of a public to private transformation in education. What we are witnessing is a new form of commercialisation of the educational system through enhanced involvement of edu-business in education and educational policy-making. This form of private-sector involvement reflects new forms of interactions between the state, educational institutions and non-state actors, such as edu-business and consultancy firms; what Ball (2012) refers to as global policy networks. Policy networks constitute in this way a new form of governance for national states that in many ways change the steering of the public sector by altering the ways that public services are delivered through a mix of joint working arrangement involving both public and private sector (Ball, 2012). They have roots in policy influences from British ‘right-wing’ think thanks that opened up for private actors to enter the public welfare sector in the 1980s and 1990s in many OECD-countries, including Sweden. The educational systems were thoroughly transformed by this and shifted from uniform and centrally regulated educational systems to ones evidencing decentralisation and deregulation of decision-making. Sweden has gone further and faster in these directions than most other countries (Arreman & Holm, 2011; Lindvall & Rothstein, 2006). Moreover, the networks frequently use the Internet for communication and information dissemination. This means though that an analysis of the social relationships between actors can be conducted through this same medium, which is also what have been done with regard to the present research. This paper will discuss how a mobile approach to ethnographic methods can be used to investigate how educational policy is being ‘done’ and how the meaning of education may be changed in new digital locations which involve new forms of social structuring that emphasize flows and mobility of people, capital and ideas (Ball, 2012; Howard, 2002; Player-Koro, 2015; Player-Koro & Beach, 2013). The methodological design that has been used is a synergistic research design between social network analysis and ethnography, called network ethnography, developed by Howard (2002). The aim has been to become involved in and explore processes involving these forms of networking and this forms the basis for our data production.

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