Studying the Internet and Violent conflict

Gohdes, Anita R.

doi:10.1177/0738894217733878

Cited by 31 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…And, even though the coverage was similar in all countries, not all individuals bought a cellular phone or hired internet services at the same time. To account for these changes in the information technologies over time, not only for changes between 2G and 3G but also on how and for what individuals use internet, social media, and mobile phones (Gohdes 2018), in Equation ( 3) we interacted our ICT variables with dummy variables for different decades: (i) 1990-2000, and (ii) 2000-2010. We expect both effects to be greater in recent decades since the use both of mobile phones and the internet became more popular after 2000.…”

Section: The Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study of the effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the patterns of civil conflicts has expanded significantly in previous years (Gohdes 2018;Weidmann 2015;Zeitzoff 2017). The evidence on the effects of ICTs on rebel violence, however, is still heterogeneous.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We make several contributions to the recent literature about technology and violent conflict (Gohdes 2018;Zeitzoff 2017). One is that, although several studies analyze the effect of new ICTs on the patterns of rebel violence (Bailard 2015;Pierskalla and Hollenbach 2013;Siegel 2015, 2015;Warren 2015), none of these studies mention the effect of ICTs on the intensity of violence provoked by armed groups nor how this effect might differ with the type of technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Constraints and military coordination: How ICTs shape the intensity of rebel violence

Macías-Medellín

Atuesta

2021

International Interactions

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Why and how do information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape the intensity of rebel violence? Recent studies find that ICTs can both increase and decrease such violence. We argue that, during civil wars, this effect depends on the type of ICTs. Mobile phones give rebels better military coordination to organize violence. In contrast, the internet increases the constraints of rebel groups to use violence. On the one hand, the internet increases the visibility of rebel groups forcing them to moderate their levels of violence. On the other hand, the internet gives rebels' opponents better tools to limit the levels of rebel violence. We test these two arguments empirically with panel data of rebel violence in countries experiencing a civil war from 1989 to 2007. Through a series of negative binomial regressions, we find general support for our hypotheses. For the case of the internet, we specifically find that its effects are concentrated in more recent periods when social media became more widespread.¿Por qué y cómo influyen las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) en la intensidad de la violencia de los rebeldes? Estudios recientes han demostrado que las TIC pueden tanto aumentar como disminuir dicha violencia. Nosotros sostenemos que, durante las guerras civiles, este efecto depende del tipo de TIC. Los teléfonos móviles proporcionan a los rebeldes una mejor coordinación militar para organizar la violencia. En cambio, Internet aumenta las limitaciones de los grupos rebeldes para utilizar la violencia. Por un lado, Internet aumenta la visibilidad de los grupos rebeldes y los obliga a moderar sus niveles de violencia. Por otro lado, Internet ofrece a los oponentes de los rebeldes mejores herramientas para limitar sus niveles de violencia. Probamos estos dos argumentos empíricamente con datos de panel de la violencia de rebeldes en países en los que hubo una guerra civil entre 1989 y 2007. Mediante una serie de regresiones binomiales negativas, encontramos un apoyo general a nuestras hipótesis. En el caso de Internet, descubrimos específicamente que sus efectos se concentran en los períodos más recientes cuando el uso de las redes sociales se generalizó.Pourquoi et comment les technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) façonnent-elles l'intensité de la violence KEYWORDS

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Section: The Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Constraints and military coordination: How ICTs shape the intensity of rebel violence

Macías-Medellín

Atuesta

2021

International Interactions

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“…One significant line of research in ComInt focuses on the relationship between social media and international or comparative political processes under conflict. Some of the most important works in this field are: Tucker et al (2017) work on the relationship between social media and democracy, 77 Steinert-Threlkeld's study on the effects of Internet on social mobilization, 78 Rød and Weidmann's work on comparative authoritarianism and the Internet, 79 Anita Gohdes' study on how regimes hide their atrocities on the Internet, 80 (as well as her important overview of how the use of Internet data has changed the study of conflict 81 ), Mitts' work on ISIS radicalization on Twitter, 82 Little's formal modelling work on how ICTs affect protest behavior, 83 Zeitzoff's review of how social media is changing conflict 84 (and his social experiment of the 2012 Gaza conflict 85 ) and Gunitsky's work on how autocracies use social media as a form of regime stabilization tool. 86 The list is far from complete, however, as the discipline and its exciting methods are rapidly evolving and improving.…”

Section: Case Studies From My Research Trajectory: How Can Conflict Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational International Relations What Can Programming, Coding and Internet Research Do for the Discipline?

Ünver¹

2018

All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace

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Computational Social Science emerged as a highly technical and popular discipline in the last few years, owing to the substantial advances in communication technology and daily production of vast quantities of personal data. As per capita data production significantly increased in the last decade, both in terms of its size (bytes) as well as its detail (heartrate monitors, internet-connected appliances, smartphones), social scientists' ability to extract meaningful social, political and demographic information from digital data also increased. A vast methodological gap exists in 'computational international relations', which refers to the use of one or a combination of tools such as data mining, natural language processing, automated text analysis, web scraping, geospatial analysis and machine learning to provide larger and better organized data to test more advanced theories of IR. After providing an overview of the potentials of computational IR and how an IR scholar can establish technical proficiency in computer science (such as starting with Python, R, QGis, ArcGis or Github), this paper will focus on some of the author's works in providing an idea for IR students on how to think about computational IR. The paper argues that computational methods transcend the methodological schism between qualitative and quantitative approaches and form a solid foundation in building truly multi-method research design.

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“…Thus, confirming that Facebook and WhatsApp posed security threats by intensifying conflicts in their role as media. Activists use them to build their coercive apparatus (Gohdes, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media: A Security Threat amongst Adolescents in Buea, Cameroon?

Ngange¹,

Fonkem²,

Ndode³

2019

SMC

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Social media provide a platform through which societies can either be constructed or destabilized. In view of the ongoing bloody conflicts in Cameroon, this study examines the extent to which social media could pose as a security threat (with particular focus on community security) amongst adolescents in Buea, capital of the South West Region in Cameroon. The study uses a quantitative approach, through the collection of data from adolescents in four communities in Buea (Muea, Bomaka, Mile 16, and Molyko). These four areas are selected because the current socio-political crisis rocking the two Anglophone regions of the country – Northwest and Southwest, is particularly severe in these communities. Social media (notably Facebook and WhatsApp) spread dangerous content, and adolescents are vulnerable to such content. Findings indicate that there is a high rate of social media use (Facebook and WhatsApp) amongst adolescents surveyed. Also, the most discussed items on social media are socio-cultural issues (68%), as opposed to political issues (17.8%). Respondents were receptive to discussions on socio-cultural issues like dressing, language and relationships. Results also show that though adolescents come across violent content on social media, they have distanced themselves from being involved in the production, consumption, and dissemination (for instance, share information as received) of such violent content, partly because of the judicial consequences of doing so, as contained in the country’s Terrorism Law of December 2014. The implication here is that, since the adolescents are not yet intoxicated (whether advertently or inadvertently) with destructive social media content, need exists for the effective education of the adolescents, to enable this vulnerable and younger population to continue desisting from negative social media content. Emphasis should be on the consumption of positive social media content that helps in the moral and psychological growth of adolescents.

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Studying the Internet and Violent conflict

Cited by 31 publications

References 72 publications

Constraints and military coordination: How ICTs shape the intensity of rebel violence

Constraints and military coordination: How ICTs shape the intensity of rebel violence

Computational International Relations What Can Programming, Coding and Internet Research Do for the Discipline?

Social Media: A Security Threat amongst Adolescents in Buea, Cameroon?

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