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Source publication
This paper introduces a spatial model of civil conflict management rhetoric to explore how the emerging norm of responsibility to protect shapes major power rhetorical responses to civil war. Using framing theory, we argue that responsibility to protect functions like a prescriptive norm, such that representing a conflict as one of (1) human rights...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... place the speeches on the rhetorical space, we have developed a dictionary with four classes of words, each of which include theme words associated with either end of our two dimensions. We identify these words using the outlined theory as well as the authors' background knowl- edge of the debates on R2P (Table 2). Accordingly, human rights violations (HRVs) framing includes references to subjects of violence ("tyranny", "perpetrator"), different words for their objects ("women", "children", "civil- ians"), and descriptors associated with acts of one-sided violence, such as "crime", "repression", "torture", "atroc- ities", "massacre" or even "genocide". ...
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Citations
... Um exemplo de uso de análise de dicionário nas RI é o artigo de Medzihorsky et al. (2017), que analisou 347 discursos proferidos no Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas (CSNU) sobre o conflito sírio entre 2011 e 2015. Os autores aplicaram um dicionário com quatro categorias (violação de direitos humanos, não violação de direitos humanos, pró-intervenção e não intervenção) para classificar os discursos dos países em intervencionistas e não intervencionistas e distingui-los entre aqueles que enquadravam ou não este conflito como uma situação de violação de direitos humanos. ...
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to present the potential of ‘text as data’ analysis in research in International Relations. From the discrepancy in the proportion of publications that adopt this textual analysis approach, we presented the leading methodologies in the dimension ranging from ‘text as text’ to ‘text as data’ to highlight the existing opportunity. Aiming to stimulate production in the area, we developed a practical and replicable case, where we answered the following question: In the face of the Israel and Palestine conflict, how do the representatives of Brazil, United States, Israel and Palestine emotionally express themselves through their speeches at the Security Council meetings United Nations (UNSC)?
Materials and Methods
Through a structured literature review, we presented the current state of the field of textual analysis in the scope of International Relations. A practical case was developed in a fully replicable way in the R language applying the sentiment analysis to the 77,857 given speeches at the UNSC from 1995 to 2019.
Results
We demonstrated the potential of ‘text as data’ to carry out systematic analyses of large document collections and their complementarity to qualitative studies that try to obtain scientific conclusions through the ‘text as text’ approach. With the practical example, we show how the ‘text as data’ approach provides a well-informed and consistent analysis of actual events and inflections expressed in the content of speeches without the need for intense prior manual dedication.
Discussion
The current state of the research in International Relations shows an evident discrepancy in the production of research with the ‘text as data’ approach compared to the ‘text as text’ approach. This scenario may result from the absence of training in contemporary methodologies and the lack of intensive computational approaches in the carried-out research. The article faces this challenge through a replicable theoretical and methodological exercise.
Keywords
text as data; text as text; content analysis; UNSC; sentiment analysis
... Somewhat belatedly, International Relations (IR) has also started to embrace this development. Besides several outstanding works [43][44][45][46], it is noteworthy that some researchers have also conducted advanced text analysis on security documents, including council speech transcripts [47][48][49][50]. Using such quantitative tools as topic models (e.g., Latent Dirichlet Allocation; LDA) and spatial models, these studies have largely focused on the structural aspects of security discourse, such as framing, often in a particular issue area (e.g., Afghan conflict, Syrian conflict, or terrorism). ...
This study conducts a systematic investigation of discursive dynamics in the context of policy deliberations on international peace and security, by performing cutting-edge text analysis on the entire body of meeting records of the Security Council of the United Nations for the past quarter of a century (1994-2019). Focusing on one of the most consequential notions for the council’s policy-making, "threat to the peace," it employs an unsupervised machine learning model, broadly termed "word embedding," to analyze how this notion has been discussed by relevant members of the council, especially its five permanent members, during the period under investigation. The study reveals persistent patterns of cross-national convergence and divergence in security discourse, including, most notably, a considerable degree of correlation in how to conceive international threats found between the close-knit Western allies in the council and their Russian counterpart.
... 20 R2P has structured major powers' rhetorical responses. 21 At the end of the debate the concept suffered a severe setback, while Chinese and Russian approaches aroused great concern. ...
While China and Russia's general policies towards the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) are similar, the two reveal nuanced differences in addressing specific emergencies. Both express support for the first two pillars of R2P while resisting coercive intervention under its aegis, as they share anxieties of domestic political security and concerns about their international image. Nonetheless, addressing cases like the Syrian crisis, Russian statements are more assertive and even aggressive while Chinese ones are usually vague and reactive. This article highlights the two states' different tones through computer-assisted text analyses. It argues that diplomatic styles reflect Russian and Chinese perceptions of their own place in the evolving international order. Experiences in past decades create divergent reference points and status prospects for them, which leads to their different strategies in signalling Great Power status. As Beijing is optimistic about its status-rising prospects, it exercises more self-restraint in order to avoid external containments and is reluctant to act as an independent ‘spoiler’. Meanwhile, Moscow interprets its Great Power status more from a frame of ‘loss’ and therefore is inclined to adopt a sterner approach to signal its status. Although their policies complement each other on many occasions, there is nothing akin to a Sino–Russian ‘bloc’;.
... However, the action by the Security Council to neutralize the Syrian conflict cannot be considered fully successful because of the obstacles placed by the countries in center of the discussions, notably the permanent members, as a result of the difficulties of coordinating a joint action in agreement. Thus, there is a clear case of a lack of action by the United Nations on the Syrian conflict (Medzihorsky, Popovic and Jenne 2017). ...
... On the other hand, it is alleged that the other members of the Security Council, the United States, France and the United Kingdom, intend to use the R2P protocol to instrumentalize their intention to promote interventions motivated by their biased national interests, among which the deposition of Assad's power stands out as the most latent aspiration of these actors. It turns out that the result of this intervention is, according to the allegations, a higher number of unsuccessful military investitures on political and non-humanitarian grounds and, consequently, more instability and damage to the population (Medzihorsky, Popovic and Jenne 2017). ...
... There is a claim on the part of the United States and its allies, France and the United Kingdom, that the impediments on the resolutions based on R2P pointed by China and Russia, regarding direct interventions in the Syrian conflict, reflect the objective of maintaining the Syrian nation under the administration of Assad. In this way, it is guarantees Russia's affinity for the current power structures that keep its strategic interests in this part of the globe (Medzihorsky, Popovic and Jenne 2017). ...
The Security Council, responsible for maintaining a peaceful global order, promotes the discussion and implementation of conflict resolution measures that represent threats to international security. The present work demonstrates that the impasses and conflicts of interest between its permanent member countries in the case of the Syrian civil war resulted in the lack of direct action of the organ and its inability to solve the humanitarian crisis in question.
This article analyses the language authoritarian leaders use to legitimate their rule. It examines the official speeches of autocrats in hegemonic regimes and compares them to the rhetorical styles of leaders in closed or competitive regimes and democracies. While recent autocracy research has drawn most attention to the phenomenon of competitive authoritarianism, the survival strategies of hegemonic regimes are less explored. Thus, the study focuses on the simulation of pluralism as a key feature of hegemonic regimes. By installing non-competitive multiparty systems which merely pretend pluralism, these regimes maintain a strong grip on power. The study finds that the leaders of hegemonic regimes use a surprisingly democratic style of language to sustain this façade of pluralism. The dictionary-based quantitative text analysis of 2074 speeches of current leaders in 22 countries illustrates that compared to other autocracies, hegemonic regimes overemphasize the (non-existing) democratic procedures in their country to fake a participatory form of government and gain national and international legitimacy. The subsequent case studies of Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia further reveal the differences in context and motives for autocrats in hegemonic, closed, and competitive regimes to use autocratic or democratic styles of language.
This open access book brings together a set of original studies that use cutting-edge computational methods to investigate conflict at various geographic scales and degrees of intensity and violence. Methodologically, this book covers a variety of computational approaches from text mining and machine learning to agent-based modelling and social network analysis.
Empirical cases range from migration policy framing in North America and street protests in Iran to violence against civilians in Congo and food riots world-wide.
Supplementary materials in the book include a comprehensive list of the datasets on conflict and dissent, as well as resources to online repositories where the annotated code and data of individual chapters can be found and where (agent-based) models can be re-produced and altered. These materials are a valuable resource for those wishing to retrace and learn from the analyses described in this volume and adapt and apply them to their own research interests.
By bringing together novel research through an international team of scholars from a range of disciplines, Computational Conflict Research pioneers and maps this emerging field. The book will appeal to students, scholars, and anyone interested in the prospects of using computational social sciences to advance our understanding of conflict dynamics.
Computer-aided text analysis (CATA) offers exciting new possibilities for conflict research that this contribution describes using a range of exemplary studies from a variety of disciplines including sociology, political science, communication studies, and computer science. The chapter synthesizes empirical research that investigates conflict in relation to text across different formats and genres. This includes both conflict as it is verbalized in the news media, in political speeches, and other public documents and conflict as it occurs in online spaces (social media platforms, forums) and that is largely confined to such spaces (e.g., flaming and trolling). Particular emphasis is placed on research that aims to find commonalities between online and offline conflict, and that systematically investigates the dynamics of group behavior. Both work using inductive computational procedures, such as topic modeling, and supervised machine learning approaches are assessed, as are more traditional forms of content analysis, such as dictionaries. Finally, cross-validation is highlighted as a crucial step in CATA, in order to make the method as useful as possible to scholars interested in enlisting text mining for conflict research.
The role of the United Nations (UN) in response to the developments in the Arab world should be viewed in the context of the larger trends of thought and action in the world organization in promoting democracy as a norm during the past nearly two decades. The norm of establishing accountability as against impunity has found wide acceptance to define the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in the new century. Against this background, the great expectations about the UN as a powerful transformational tool toward democratization had received a setback with tempering experiences in responding to developments in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen since 2011. While the UN remained a bystander in Egypt in the wake of a coup against President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, it is striking that UN actions in Libya had cascading effect on its failure to act in Syria, which in turn produced a sense of fatigue in dealing with the situation in Yemen. In Libya’s case, the UN authorized military intervention did more harm than good to the cause of civilian protection and establishment of peaceful transition, but in Syria’s case, the military and political developments took place outside in the region and between major powers because of the diplomatic deadlock in the Security Council. Yemen comes out as a humanitarian nightmare, because of the exploitation of internal tribal suspicions by the regional geopolitical interests, which primarily spoiled all prospects of a promising role of the UN in providing a democratic framework of constitutional governance. The UN was unfortunately unable to exploit the opportunities thrown up by the Arab Spring as shown by its experiences in Libya, Syria, and Yemen.
