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The Year of Living (Slightly) Less Dangerously: Episode 7

3/15/2014

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The Year..:  2014 is the year of ENDKILL.  A 365 day journey into my research archive and active agenda, reflecting on what we know and do not know about mass atrocities and how to stop them (delivered once weekly so as not to burden the viewer/reader/audience).  (Sent via proxy while traveling)

With renewed discussion of Human Security Report and Jay Ulfelder's reflection about the possibility of declining violence, I wished to step back or to the side for a second.  At present, much of the discussion about trends in violence is problematic.  

First, much of the discussion seems to be based on war - both the interstate and civil varieties. These are of course historically important but they are not the only games in town. Indeed, by some accounts, these have been side shows to the arguably more lethal state sponsored mass killings like the destruction of native americans in the us, jews and others during the holocaust or mass purges of the Stalinist and Maoist regimes. Steven Pinker also talks about homicide but essentially he seems to be talking about what takes place in Europe.  What of the rest of the world?  Detroit and the Democratic Republic of Congo are not trending downward anytime soon.

Second, the current discussion seems to conflate perpetrators in an unsettling way. Homicide is undertaken by ordinary citizens; terrorism, insurgency and revolution by behavioral challengers; and genocide and most human rights violations by governments. These all take the same types of cues and respond to means, motive as well as opportunity in the same ways?  Ummmmmmmm.  

Third, there seems to be little discussion about the substantive meaning of the trend. A lower or declining number is believed to be better but I would like to reflect on this for a few minutes.  

If political authorities no longer kill those under their jurisdiction because they have subdued, beaten, "pacified" the relevant populations (e.g., removed challenging ideas to those in power and those associated with them), does this mean that things have actually gotten better? I can see the logic of saying yes as there are fewer dead bodies but I can also see this as limiting as it does not prompt us to assess the quality of life for the bodies that are left walking around. 

Before I am accused of saying that some people are better off dead, let me clarify.  Within the trendology discussion there appears to be little discussion regarding what the live bodies do/think/feel that are left on the earth.  If we were found to live in a world where we were less likely to be killed but we were all only thinking one idea (insert random idea here), is this a world that we would like to be in?  I think the question merits consideration. 

Accordingly, I would like to see and will participate in a more detailed conversation about the causal mechanisms driving the trends under discussion.  We may be in a "long peace" but if "peace" is only conceived of as non-violence, then I would suggest that that peace is an empty one.  I do not wish to only live in a world that is only less violent (a conclusion that I am not willing to completely accept yet). I also wish to live in a world that is more diverse in terms of ideas regarding how we should/could/ought to live. I wish to live in a world where the different people of the world are respected for the beliefs that they have held throughout time not the ones they are wiling to adopt as they move forward.  I wish to live in a world that is more equitable, which is something that rarely enters into these discussions about trends. Finally, I wish to feel more not less connected to those around me (insert crack about social media and video games here).  In short, I wish to have a deeper conception of life beyond violence/non-violence.  All I am saying is "give peace a chance".

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State Repression via Twitter and Texting?

1/2/2014

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I often wonder about whether the new technologies that we have available to us improve anything or if we just keep creating things to create them.  Here are some examples: one, two and three.

I came across the project below and for the first time in a long time thought that the approach was innovative and could be employed to a wide variety of topics relevant to state repression: http://labs.aljazeera.net/warongaza/

Are we at the dawn of a new age though?  Perhaps.  Still have some questions to answer: 1) is the data that we receive from social media any more accurate than our traditional sources, 2) are there incentives for people to tell stories in social media that differ from other sources (what does instagram get us that Reuters does not?), 3) is more information always better information, 4) are the characteristics of the events of interest (who, what, when, where and why) covered with the same level of effectiveness as NGO & government reports or even the media, and 5) who is tracking all the different sources to see what is/what is not being covered?

I don't want to be one of those people that talks about what things used to be like but at least when I looked at a  newspaper I had some sense that there was an actual person somewhere at the newspaper or newswire that would take responsibility for what was printed or at least walk me through what happened that resulted in a story. This is also the case with regard to NGO reports but this is seldom the case with government reports and I'm starting the think that this is also the case for social media. How should we use the new technology when we don't know who is behind it?  Also where are the huge depositories that are compiling all these things (outside of the NSA of course) so that we could start to make some of the comparisons across social media?  

Some action: Well, we need a contention and social media panel/roundtable at every national meeting until we get caught up.  I'm on a panel at ISA on Thursday at 4pm with friends Steve Saideman and Daniel Drezner among others to have part of this conversation (in "De-Mystifying Twitter for Scholars of Comparative and International Politics"). This is only the tip of the iceberg though.  We need to take this show on the road and it needs to get bigger.  The need is clear.  More of this information is becoming available and more people are starting to use it in their research.  There either needs to be a Social Media section of APSA, Midwest and ISA or, more broadly, a section on Data.  Political Methodology takes us part of the way but not completely there - especially recognizing that data generation is a different animal and artform from data analysis.  Once I read the Symposium on Data Collection and Collaboration in PS, I started to have this idea.  Now, 

 


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    Christian Davenport's Caveat Civis - Citizen Beware

    Given the elusive nature of state repression, it is crucial to be constantly aware of information as it becomes available.  This is not always easy to do and with the different tactics, perpetrators, locations and victims of domestic spying, torture, arrest, detention, disappearances and mass killing, it is necessary to keep one's eyes open, along with one's mind - Citizen's Beware.  The data is out there.  We just need to find it and figure out what it means.

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