Ali Ünlü

Ali Ünlü
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Ali verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
Verified
Ali verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
University of Virginia | UVa · School of Education and Human Development

Doctor of Philosophy
Multidisciplinary researcher specializing in the intersection of public policy, public health, and criminology.

About

61
Publications
26,751
Reads
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406
Citations
Introduction
Ali Unlu, PhD, is a Research Scientist at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. His research employs mixed methods, integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches, along with techniques such as machine learning and natural language processing. His research interests include criminology, public policy, public health policy, and youth studies.
Additional affiliations
May 2019 - December 2024
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare
Position
  • Senior Researcher
Description
  • - Data Analyst: Applied traditional statistics, AI, machine learning, and deep learning for data model development, focusing on survey and structured data. - Consultant and Advisor to CUBE: Utilize public policy analysis and data science background to provide strategic advice in Cultural, Behavioral, and Media Insights Centre (CUBE) - Social Media Researcher: Apply NLP for social media data analysis, focusing on societal issues like drug policy, misinformation, political trust, and hate speech.
May 2022 - December 2024
Aalto University
Position
  • Visiting Researcher
August 2009 - August 2014
Ministry of Interior (Turkey)
Position
  • Policy Analyst
Description
  • Drug prevention programs - Developing struggling strategies against international drug trafficking. - National and international trainer
Education
August 2006 - July 2009
University of Central Florida
Field of study
  • Public Affairs
August 2005 - August 2006
Roger Williams University
Field of study
  • Administration of Criminal Justice
September 1996 - June 2000
Police Academy
Field of study
  • Criminal Justice

Publications

Publications (61)
Article
Full-text available
This study investigates online hate speech in Finland, particularly Twitter messages targeting people of Muslim faith and the LGBTQ+ community, using a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative text classification with a BERT model and qualitative thematic analysis via BERTopic and examination of highly interacted posts from 2018 to 2023. T...
Article
Full-text available
This research investigates the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation spread on Twitter within the unique context of Finland. Employing cutting-edge methodologies including text classification, topic modeling, social network analysis, and correspondence analysis (CA), the study analyzes 1.6 million Finnish tweets from December 2019 to October 2022. Mi...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The report aims to identify legal frameworks, models, and implementation practices of the decriminalization policies and to assess their empirical results. Statistics show that the prevalence of drug use has increased for decades all around the world despite all the strict measures taken. Decriminalization policy has emerged as a response to unbala...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: Substance abuse amongst youth has been growing in developed and developing nations, including Turkey. This growth is related to a number of factors, not the least of which are forces associated with development, globalization, and youth culture. The identification of risk factors for youth substance abuse for particular populations is an...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Crisis management has gained importance in the policy agendas of many countries around the world due to the increases in the number of natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Thus, this paper has two purposes. The first is to illustrate how the Turkish Government's Disaster and Crisis Management System has been developed. The second purpos...
Chapter
This study conducts an in-depth analysis of feature selection methods in AI, underscoring their importance in social science and public health research. Using the Finnish National Drug Survey's 2022 dataset, which comprises 76 selected features, the study aims to identify the main predictors of cannabis use among Finnish populations over the last 1...
Article
Full-text available
Substance use poses a significant public health challenge worldwide, including in Finland. This study seeks to predict patterns of substance use, aiming to identify the driving factors behind these trends using artificial intelligence techniques. This research utilizes data from the 2022 Finnish National Drug Survey, comprising 3,857 participants,...
Article
Full-text available
This article presents the results of a comprehensive study examining the influence of bots on the dissemination of COVID-19 misinformation and negative vaccine stance on Twitter over a period of three years. The research employed a tripartite methodology: text classification, topic modeling, and network analysis to explore this phenomenon. Text cla...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: To identify the risk factors associated with conduct disorder traits in a sample of Turkish high school participants. Methods: The survey encompassed 31,604 high school students, from which a final sample of 31,272 was selected for data analysis. The survey instrument had 66 questions in total with multiple sub-questions, and it was coll...
Article
Full-text available
This study investigates the impact of X on political discourse and hate speech in Finland, focusing on Muslim and LGBTQ+ communities from 2018 to 2023. During this period, these groups have experienced increased hate speech and a concerning surge in hate crimes. Utilizing network analysis methods, we identified online communities and examined the i...
Article
Full-text available
This study employs a mixed-methods approach to investigate the nature of Facebook posts related to Muslims and LGBTQ+ individuals in Finland, spanning a period of 4 years. Through the use of the CrowdTangle platform, the researchers extracted and analyzed Facebook posts that encompassed predetermined keywords indicative of potential hate speech. Th...
Article
This study analyzed 1,683,700 vaccine-related tweets in Finnish using FinBERT language model, Botometer, and BERTopic, from December 2019 to October 2022. A strong correlation was identified between Negative Stance towards Vaccines (NSV) and misinformation, with an upward trend over time and a significant role of malicious bot accounts. Topic model...
Article
Background: this study utilized foresight analysis to project drug policy trends and challenges in Finland up to 2030. it aimed to develop scenarios and strategies for addressing critical issues and to explore alternative policy options. Methods: a comprehensive methodology was employed, including scope analysis, horizon scanning, trend analysis, a...
Article
Full-text available
This study employs the Social Amplification of Risk Framework to investigate the stance on COVID-19 vaccines and the spread of misinformation on Twitter in Finland. Analyzing over 1.6 million tweets and manually annotating 4150 samples, the research highlights the challenges faced by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in steering on...
Article
Objective: To explore the associations between the type and the amount of substances used with depression and anxiety symptoms by high school students. Methods: The study data was collected by the Istanbul Department of Education on 31,604 high school students which was a survey of 66 questions administered in the school setting. The primary quest...
Article
Objective The existing literature on the contribution of substance use and psychosocial risk factors in the development of suicidal ideation in the Turkish youth provides limited information. This study aims to compare the relative association of substance use and psychosocial risk factors with suicidal ideations in a sample of high school students...
Article
Full-text available
Background: This research extends prior studies by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare on pandemic-related risk perception, concentrating on the role of trust in health authorities and its impact on public health outcomes. Objective: The paper aims to investigate variations in trust levels over time and across social media platforms, as w...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Cannabis use continues to increase worldwide, and a number of nation states are changing their cannabis policies. Policy changes require research into key populations, namely, people who use cannabis. This study aims to examine sociodemographic differences of young Finns who reported using cannabis mainly for self-medication versus mainly r...
Article
Background: Identifying the most important predictors of substance use is crucial for developing effective prevention policies. Traditional statistical methods have some limitations in this regard. To address these limitations, the researchers utilized artificial intelligence (AI) methods to identify the top 10 most important predictors of cannabis...
Preprint
BACKGROUND This research extends prior studies by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare on pandemic-related risk perception, concentrating on the role of trust in health authorities and its impact on public health outcomes. OBJECTIVE The paper aims to investigate variations in trust levels over time and across social media platforms, as wel...
Article
Full-text available
Background: In September 2021, a Finnish political party, the Greens, voted to include cannabis policy reform in their party programme, which would legalise the use, possession, manufacture and sale of cannabis. A rapid public discussion has emerged on different social media platforms, including Twitter. Methods: We downloaded 10 days of Twitter da...
Article
This study examined the literature on online terrorism studies between 2001 and 2022 and compared themes across journal segments and funded research. The results showed that there is a relationship between funding and the number of publications in recent years. While themes in the core terrorism journals more likely to follow the traditional terror...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: “Anomie” describes social dysregulation or a social condition in which individuals feel isolated instead of united with other members of the society. The literature on the association of anomie and loneliness with suicidality and youth psychopathology has been demonstrated in some studies based in Western nations. This study aims to comp...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives: This study examines the data from a large survey of youth in metropolitan Istanbul to examine the generation status in rural-urban immigration and its relationship of substance use/alcohol use in a high school (HS) setting. Methods: The study data were collected by the Istanbul Department of Education on 31,604 HS students which were a...
Article
Drug consumption rooms are one of the harm reduction interventions to handle complex social problems. The Helsinki city initiative puts drug consumption room (DCR) on a government agenda in Finland, which has also triggered a broader discussion. This study presents how stakeholders problematise and what solutions they propose for DCRs. The research...
Article
Full-text available
This paper uses bibliometric analysis to evaluate the literature on immigration, crime, and violence to find out how these concepts are studied across disciplines. The paper gave specific attention to the field of Criminology to demonstrate the variation of the use of these concepts in the literature and how much it differs from other disciplines....
Article
Full-text available
Background: Use of drug consumption rooms is a novel harm reduction approach to reach mar-ginalised and isolated people who used drugs, under the high risk of overdose deaths and infectious diseases. The aim of this article was to evaluate the policy opportunities and barriers of the Helsinki City initiative for establishing the first drug consumpt...
Article
Full-text available
Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) have been established to reach high-risk people who use drugs (PWUDs) and reduce drug-associated harm. Despite effectiveness, their establishment requires strong advocacy and efforts since moral perspectives tend to prevail over health outcomes in many countries. DCRs have generally emerged as a local response to inade...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines several family structural variables that have a hypothesized effect on delinquency, substance abuse, and violence. We conducted a survey for potential correlates of Sampson and Laub's age-graded informal social control theory variables within the Turkish context. Our large sample size (31,272), drawn from high school students in...
Article
Conceptualizing religiosity as a multidimensional construct, this study aimed to investigate the influence of religiosity on youth delinquency. Three dimensions of religiosity-belief about religion, religious practice, and religious social environment-were examined as predictors of delinquency. The survey data collected in 2010 by the Governance of...
Article
The civil war in Syria caused millions of people to become refugees in neighboring countries and Europe. Government capacity and the availability of resources are crucial for managing a refugee crisis effectively; however, they may not be sufficient in all circumstances. There must be a healthy relationship between the host government and refugees...
Article
The article provides a contemporary evaluation of Turkish drug-control policy. Turkish drug-control policy is heavily predicated on deterrence-based supply-side policies to the neglect of a holistic strategy that sufficiently addresses supply and demand reduction. The article explores recent subtle trends in drug-control policy to assert that the T...
Article
The aim of this study is to analyze the literature about the impact of social capital on youth behavior. Research in substance use and social capital field was analyzed and related materials were integrated in an analytic approach. According to the literature, three dimensions of social capital have been well studied by many scholars in adolescent...
Article
Full-text available
The literature shows that young people are more vulnerable than adults to substance use. Religiosity is one of the factors that has been considered to protect youth from substance use and has also been interpreted as contributing to the substance abuse recovery process. Conceptualizing religiosity as a multidimensional construct, this study aimed t...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study is to evaluate how the impact of social capital on youth behaviour varies by mediating factors and to suggest evidence-based policy interventions. The type of activities adolescents participate in, the time and type of intra-familial interactions between parents and adolescents and the type of peer groups adolescents interact...
Article
Full-text available
127 Öz Türkiye' de öğrencilerin madde kullanımı üzerine ya-pılan birçok araştırma madde kullanım yaygınlığı üzerine yoğunlaşmaktadır. Kesitsel çalışmalarla öğren-ciler arasındaki madde kullanım oranındaki değişimi anlamak yeterli değildir; çünkü davranışlarına etki eden risk ve koruma faktörleri zamanla farklılık gös-termektedir. Bu araştırmanın am...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose: The aim of the study is to explore the drug prevalence of youth and to evaluate the role of demographic characteristics on substance use. Method: This self administrative survey was conducted in 28 provinces of Istanbul on 31.272 students from 154 high schools in May-June 2010. Findings: Cigarette, alcohol and cannabis were the most common...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: School environment is one of the important factors affecting behavior and use of addictive substances in youth. School-related studies on youth behavior are categorized mainly in 3 areas: school structures, sociocultural conditions at schools, and social networks at schools. In this study, the prevalence of youth substance use (cigarette...
Article
Full-text available
Substance use is a threat to the health and well-being of youths, their families, and society as well. The literature shows that social interactions with peers, parents, and community may have an impact on adolescents’ behavior. Using data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health of 2007, this study investigated the impact of social capital...
Chapter
Full-text available
Gençlerin şiddet ve şiddet içerikli suç davranışlarına yönelten en önemli etkenlerden biri madde kullanım ve bağımlılığıdır. Yurt dışında yapılan birçok araştırmada, madde bağımlılığı ile şiddet ve şiddet içerikli suça yönelme davranışı arasındaki ilişki, konuya dönük birçok farklı teori açısından ele alınmıştır. Buna karşın, ülkemizde söz konusu i...
Article
Full-text available
Middle East Quarterly Fall 2013, pp. 41-48 http://www.meforum.org/3659/iran-turkey-drug-trafficking
Article
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Objectives: Youth suicide is a major social and health problem worldwide. Over the last decade Turkey has become a regional power with growing regional aspirations with a young population and rapidly growing economy. The limited literature on Turkish youth suggests that suicidality is a growing challenge for Turkish youth. This study aims to examin...
Article
Full-text available
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Objective: The literature suggests school structures and sociocultural environment and the networks within schools play important role in crime and violence among youth. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence and variation of crime an...
Article
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Transnational crime syndicates (TCS) have increasingly been deploying couriers to transport narcotics. TCSs develop innovative strategies and constantly recruit couriers that demonstrate fewest risk indicators. As a counterstrategy, drug-enforcement agencies launch courier-profiling programs and identify the emerging risk factors. Demographic facto...
Article
Full-text available
The objective of this study is to explore profiles of and differences between addict and non-addict street-level drug dealers. This is a cross-sectional study using the data of street-level drug dealers who were captured in 2008 by Istanbul Narcotics Police (N=486). Most of the street-level drug dealers were male, drug addict, had limited education...
Article
Full-text available
This analysis seeks to attain two primary objectives. The first is to illustrate how U.S.-based information policy has been shaped and affected following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The second is to produce a valid, qualitative evaluation regarding policy effectiveness, the impacts on public life, and best practices in governme...
Article
Full-text available
This study evaluates the effectiveness of alternative-development programs in Bolivia and makes suggestions about how these programs can succeed. Several programs have been implemented in Bolivia over the past thirty-plus years, but little progress has occurred. Governments' political and economic frameworks may shape programs, but field implementa...
Chapter
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Even though inter-agency information sharing and network systems are important practices in both theory and practice throughout the world, many countries could not achieve the desired results yet. Today in many areas of public bureaucracies (health, environment, transportation, agriculture etc.) the inter-agency networks are an inevitable reality o...
Article
Full-text available
The field of public management has changed with the governance idea. Governance is a new term in public administration area offering a different perspective for public solutions. The goal of this article is to introduce new public problem solving methods by introducing governance tools requiring direct public involvement and equal participation. Su...
Article
Full-text available
A significant increase in the number of captured street drug dealers has been observed in Turkey. However, there are neither available government reports nor enough social research in this field in order to understand the possible causes. To implement better prevention policies, socio-economic risk factors and vulnerable groups should be identified...
Chapter
Full-text available
Kuryeler vasıtasıyla uyuşturucu kaçakçılığı tüm dünyada olduğu gibi Türkiye’de artmaktadır. Kaçakçılar ülkelerin sınırlarını geçebilecek farklı profillerde ki kişileri kurye yapmaktadırlar. Bu nedenle kuryelerin birçok ortak noktaları vardır. Ancak bu benzerlikler kadar taşıdıkları madde çeşidine göre de farklılıklar görülmektedir. Bu benzerlikler...
Article
Full-text available
Institutional Theory is one of the main organizational theories that investigates change processes of organizations. Most of the organizations in Turkey has deeply affected by the reform efforts, which has gained momentum after 1999 Helsinki Summit, towards European Union membership. In this study, changes in the Turkish National Police, which is o...
Article
The purpose of this study is to examine a method of predicting and understanding torture during international conflicts by applying and linking two established theoretical approaches to the Abu Ghraib case. The first theoretical approach is based on the circumplex model of family functioning focusing on cohesion, flexibility, and communication (Ols...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study is to analyze the literature about the impact of social capital on youth behavior. Research in substance use and social capital field was analyzed and related materials were integrated in an analytic approach. According to the literature, three dimensions of social capital have been well studied by many scholars in adolescent...
Article
Full-text available
Interorganizational networks are increasingly used by local law enforcement agencies in response to crime in United States and elsewhere. Interorganizational networks help law enforcement to cope with the uncertainty of complex response operations in the local area by sharing information with other law enforcement agencies. While it is a developing...
Chapter
Full-text available
Crisis management (CM) systems are gaining more importance than ever nowadays because of the increasing number of natural and manmade crises. However, there is not a unique CM policy in the world; the systems are different in every single country. Even developed European Union member countries apply different CM systems. Defining the characteristic...
Article
Full-text available
Crisis management (CM) systems are gaining more importance than ever nowadays because of the increasing number of crises. Yet there is not a unique policy offered in the literature; the CM systems are different from country to country. Even developed European Union member countries apply different CM systems. Defining the CM characteristics of EU c...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this paper is to examine accounts of the Bosnian genocides by applying Lonnie Athens' violentization theory [Athens, L. (2003). Violentization in larger social context. In L. Athens & J.T. Ulmer (Eds.), Violent acts and violentization: assessing, applying, and developing Lonnie Athens' theories (pp. 1–41). Boston: Elsevier Science] a...
Article
Full-text available
Substance use, such as alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana, is a threat to the health and well-being of the youth, their families, and society as well. Government supports and implements several programs to protect youth from substance use. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of social capital on youth behavior and to suggest evidence-bas...

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