GDELT just released their new Global Visualization dashboard, and it's pretty cool. It blinks and flashes, glows and pulses, and is really interesting to navigate. Naturally, as a social scientist who studies conflict, I have some thoughts. 1) This is really cool. The user interface is attractive, it's easy to navigate, and it's intuitive. I … Continue reading Big News: The GDELT Global Dashboard
Peacebuilding
Call for abstracts! Proposed ISA panel on Crowdsourcing and Violence
My colleague Dr. Pamina Firchow and I are organizing a panel for next year's ISA meeting in New Orleans (Feb. 15-21, 2015) on crowdsourcing and the study of violence and violence prevention. Below you'll find our panel description, and instructions for submitting an abstract to us. We'll need them by May 23 so we can make … Continue reading Call for abstracts! Proposed ISA panel on Crowdsourcing and Violence
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
My TechChange Swan Song
Cross posted from the TechChange blog This past Thursday and Friday (May 8 & 9) I participated in the ICTs and Violence Prevention workshop hosted by the World Bank’s Social Development Office. We had an excellent collection of experts from across academia, NGOs, and government who discussed the complexities of using technology for violence prevention. One … Continue reading My TechChange Swan Song
MONUSCO Gets an Offensive Boost
The ongoing peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest in the world numbering 20,000 operators, is about to get an increase in its total number of soldiers. Two thousand South African, Malawian, and Tanzanian soldiers will be deploying this summer with a mandate to seek out and engage militias operating in the … Continue reading MONUSCO Gets an Offensive Boost
Book review! “Crafting Peace” by Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie
Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie make an argument that the most robust form of negotiated peace involves a well-designed power or institution sharing agreement between the parties involved in a civil war. They make this argument in “Crafting Peace” using a statistical analysis of conflict cessation that includes variables covering duration, external intervention and measures … Continue reading Book review! “Crafting Peace” by Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie
Philippe Le Billon: Wars of Plunder (Columbia University Press: 2012)
Philippe Le Billon’s Wars of Plunder takes previous research on the mathematical relationship between natural resources and conflict and combines this with qualitative understandings of power and space to create a nuanced explanation of how different natural resources relate to conflict. Focusing initially on work done by economists such as Paul Collier and Macartan Humphreys, … Continue reading Philippe Le Billon: Wars of Plunder (Columbia University Press: 2012)
ArmsGlobe: Google, PRIO and the Igarape Institute map the arms trade
I was scanning the Huffington Post this morning and came across the headline Global Arms Trade From 1992-2010 Visualized By Google. Tech, arms trading, and maps; sounded interesting since small arms control is something I'm deeply interested in. Using the NISAT database, PRIO, Google and the Igarape Institute got together and created an interactive map of the global … Continue reading ArmsGlobe: Google, PRIO and the Igarape Institute map the arms trade
The Impact of Tech: Getting Past ‘Good Versus Bad’
The emergent theme from my travels this summer presenting academic papers on tech for social change hasn’t been “is it good or bad,” but instead “why are their good and bad outcomes, and can these be generalizable?” It’s this kind of question that motivates me as a political scientist. Yes, indeed technology can be used … Continue reading The Impact of Tech: Getting Past ‘Good Versus Bad’
Charles P. Martin-Shields 