arXiv subjects

H. Akin Unver

Publications and source records attributed to H. Akin Unver.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2019

Internet, Social Media and Conflict Studies Can Greater Interdisciplinarity Solve the Analytical Deadlocks in Cybersecurity Research?

In recent years, computational research methods, digital trace data and online human interactions have contributed to the emergence of new technology-oriented sub-fields within International Relations (IR). Although the cybersecurity scholarship had an initial promise to be the primus inter pares among these emerging fields, the main thrust of this new methodological innovation came through the digital conflict studies sub-field. By integrating Internet and social media research tools and questions into its core topics of sub-national violence, terrorism and radical mobilization, digital conflict studies has recently succeeded in addressing some of the data validity and methodology problems faced by the cybersecurity scholarship. This article begins by briefly reviewing some of the persistent data and method-oriented hurdles faced by the cybersecurity scholarship. Then, it moves onto a more detailed account of how digital conflict studies have been addressing some of these deadlocks by focusing individually on the literature on onset, mobilization, targeting, intensity/duration and termination phases of conflicts. Ultimately, the article concludes with the suggestion that the cybersecurity scholarship could move past its own deadlocks by building more granular and dedicated research datasets and establishing mechanisms to share event data with the scientific community.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2018

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

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, heart rate 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, or ComInt, 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 for building truly multi method research design.

cs.CY↗