Another March, another ISA conference. 2014 has been good, especially since the networking and socializing was matched by excellent feedback on what I presented. The highlights: What I thought was a failed experiment in getting Twitter to love me actually teased out some interesting methodological challenges that other panelists on the Crowdsourcing Violence panel faced. … Continue reading Learnings from ISA
Peace and Conflict
Peacekeeping, Peace Enforcement, Peacemaking, Non-violence…how is tech affecting these things
Headed to Toronto soon…
I'll be at the International Studies Association annual convention from March 26-30 presenting two papers (never again will I submit two abstracts for papers that have to be written from scratch...) on Crowdsourcing methodology and technology in peacekeeping operations. Should be a lot of fun - feel free to give me feedback on the papers … Continue reading Headed to Toronto soon…
Finding Big Data’s Place in Conflict Analysis
Daniel Solomon recently posted a piece on how we conceptualize (and often misconceptualize) the role of big data in conflict event prediction. His post got me thinking about what role big data plays in conflict analysis. This comes on the heels of Chris Neu's post on the TechChange blog about the limits of using crowdsourcing to … Continue reading Finding Big Data’s Place in Conflict Analysis
New post on the TechChange blog!
I just had a new post go up on the TechChange blog - I haven't written for them in a while, so it feels good to be writing for them again!Here's a brief intro, and you can read the rest here:"In recent years, mobile phones have drawn tremendous interest from the conflict management community. Given … Continue reading New post on the TechChange blog!
Disaggregating Peacekeeping Data: A new dataset on peacekeeping contributions
Jacob Kathman at the University of Buffalo has an article in the current issue of Conflict Management and Peace Science about his new dataset on the numbers and nationalities of all peacekeeper contributions by month since 1990. This is a pretty fantastic undertaking since peacekeeping data is often difficult to find, and no small feat … Continue reading Disaggregating Peacekeeping Data: A new dataset on peacekeeping contributions
Peacekeeping, economic growth and technology
The economics of peacekeeping are difficult to unpack but there are signs that when a mission has a strategy that includes long-range economic planning, it can have positive long term effects on the host country’s economy. This could help us understand the strategic value of communication technology as not just a tool for good governance … Continue reading Peacekeeping, economic growth and technology
Syria Update
Yesterday I mentioned the need to be transparent with our intelligence on chemical weapons use in Syria if we wanted to take the moral high ground. Today I read the release outlining the U.S. intelligence findings on the attack. The Huffington Post linked to this, along with a quote from Secretary of State Kerry that … Continue reading Syria Update
Getting traction in the United Nations on Syria
As I've been following story of the chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and the resulting moves to prepare for military strikes, I've felt like the U.N. has been an under-utilized resource for dealing with the crisis. A few friends mention that President Obama's 'red line' could be defined as something other than a military strike, … Continue reading Getting traction in the United Nations on Syria
Unpacking P-values: Turning statistical significance into practical significance
I often get questions about the veracity of using statistics to understand conflict and political behavior, especially when using predictive or confirmatory analytic methods. The questions are well founded, since a recent article found that potentially up to 54% of statistical results in the medical field are spurious. This should give social scientists pause, since … Continue reading Unpacking P-values: Turning statistical significance into practical significance
“Crowdsharing” and Violence Prevention
One thing I'm working on in my doctoral research is understanding why crowdsourcing works in conflict management and resolution...or should at least logically work based on the various theories of conflict management and resolution developed and refined over the last 40 or so years. In this post, I'm going to use Kenyan election violence as … Continue reading “Crowdsharing” and Violence Prevention
Charles P. Martin-Shields 