This INSPIRE award brings together research areas typically supported by the Political Science Program of the Social and Economic Sciences Division of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate; the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems and Office of Cyberinfrastructure of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate; and the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) Directorate.
Although the relationship between grievances and political instability has concerned and fascinated policymakers and scientists for more than a century, prior research has been limited to comparative analysis of countries and a limited number of social surveys conducted within select countries. These traditional methods are expensive, labor intensive, and slow. A stark example of the weakness of traditional approaches are the events of the so-called "Arab Spring" which resulted in the outbreak of mass protests across North Africa and the Middle East; led to the overthrow of regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya; fomented a brutal and prolonged civil war in Syria; and triggered severe crack-downs in Bahrain. The Arab Spring caught both policymakers and academics by surprise, even though these events appear to have developed in large part out of grievances that built over decades of autocratic rule, widespread corruption and economic stagnation.
The main purpose of this research is to exploit the recent availability of worldwide, individual-level data from social media outlets such as Twitter and from the massive availability of worldwide news outlets to assess the possibility of measuring perceptions of grievances at the micro-level in real time for purposes of forecasting instability. It brings together researchers in computer science, mathematics, and the social sciences to generate theoretical and empirical advances. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are now using social media to communicate, making this technology-enabled forum a major de facto platform for political participation, expression, advocacy, and mobilization. In addition, the widespread availability of online news reports now offers the ability to collect content from newspapers and other print media worldwide and code for perceived grievances. By triangulating measures across social media, the news online, and traditional databases, the project evaluates their relative strength in terms of ascertaining and measuring grievances to forecast political instability. The overarching purpose of this research is to assist policymakers in developing improved methods for identifying and anticipating hot zones of instability and conflict. This has important implications for research but also for national policy, in terms of strategic thinking about defense, diplomacy, and humanitarian assistance, as well as in developing potential interventions and assessing their effectiveness once implemented.
