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| 1 |
ID:
152298
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| Summary/Abstract |
Increasingly, scholars interested in understanding conflict processes have turned to evaluating out-of-sample forecasts to judge and compare the usefulness of their models. Research in this vein has made significant progress in identifying and avoiding the problem of overfitting sample data. Yet there has been less research providing strategies and tools to practically improve the out-of-sample performance of existing models and connect forecasting improvement to the goal of theory development in conflict studies. In this article, we fill this void by building on lessons from machine learning research. We highlight a set of iterative tasks, which David Blei terms ‘Box’s loop’, that can be summarized as build, compute, critique, and think. While the initial steps of Box’s loop will be familiar to researchers, the underutilized process of model criticism allows researchers to iteratively learn more useful representations of the data generation process from the discrepancies between the trained model and held-out data. To benefit from iterative model criticism, we advise researchers not only to split their available data into separate training and test sets, but also sample from their training data to allow for iterative model development, as is common in machine learning applications. Since practical tools for model criticism in particular are underdeveloped, we also provide software for new visualizations that build upon already existing tools. We use models of civil war onset to provide an illustration of how our machine learning-inspired research design can simultaneously improve out-of-sample forecasting performance and identify useful theoretical contributions. We believe these research strategies can complement existing designs to accelerate innovations across conflict processes.
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| 2 |
ID:
137614
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| Summary/Abstract |
With the emergence of aviation as a target for terrorism and serious crime in the 1970s, the affective dimension of airport security changed drastically and is now carefully engineered as a zone of earnest and solemn protocol. Against a backdrop of bombings and hijackings, airport security today enacts a “no bullshit” approach to the “war on terror.” Humor has essentially been banned from screening operations. From signs reading “No bomb jokes, please,” to drastic consequences in the case of non-compliance, security appears as something that is not to be fooled around with. Against this background, this paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork at Hamburg airport during the German trial run with body scanners in 2011. During the time of observation, we found a surprising amount of reciprocal laughter and joking. We argue that this can be conceptualized as an attempt to break open a space for laughter, momentarily abandoning protocol in order to deal with issues of visualization, exposure, and shame which arise from the new focus on the fleshly anatomical body.
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| 3 |
ID:
170371
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| Summary/Abstract |
Are Taiwanese voters polarized? By presenting four novel visualizations based on a factor analysis of Taiwan National Security Surveys from 2002 to 2017, this article describes the contours of structural change in Taiwan politics. Overall, the cross-strait position among Taiwanese voters can be described by a stable inverted U shape over time. This arises from the fact that most nonpartisans—typically neglected in the literature on polarization—are moderate. Before 2008, increasing polarization among partisans can be attributed to pan-green voters moving toward independence. Between 2008 and 2014, decreasing polarization stems from moderates self-identifying as pan-blue supporters. Since 2014, a record-breaking number of nonpartisans have left the pan-blue camp, and more extreme pan-blue voters have contributed to a return of polarization among partisans. The results yield important implications for the study of polarization and populism, as well as for the future of Taiwanese politics.
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| 4 |
ID:
153110
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| Summary/Abstract |
The relationship between vision and action is a key element of both practices and conceptualizations of border surveillance in Europe. This article engages with what we call the ‘operative vision’ of surveillance at sea, specifically as performed by the border control apparatus in the Aegean. We analyse the political consequences of this operative vision by elaborating on three examples of fieldwork conducted in the Aegean and on the islands of Chios and Lesbos. One of the main aims is to bring the figure of the migrant back into the study of border technologies. By combining insights from science and technology studies with border, mobility and security studies, the article distinguishes between processes of intervention, mobilization and realization and emphasizes the role of migrants in their encounter with surveillance operations. Two claims are brought forward. First, engaging with recent scholarly work on the visual politics of border surveillance, we circumscribe an ongoing ‘transactional politics’. Second, the dynamic interplay between vision and action brings about a situation of ‘recalcitrance’, in which mobile objects and subjects of various kinds are drawn into securitized relations, for instance in encounters between coast guard boats and migrant boats at sea. Without reducing migrants to epiphenomena of those relations, this recalcitrance typifies the objects of surveillance as both relatable as well as resistant, particularly in the tensions between border control and search and rescue.
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| 5 |
ID:
097740
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
There have been numerous calls to include images in the analysis of securitization and the social construction of security issues. The present article answers these calls by examining a longstanding process of securitization in which speech acts have been interwoven with a powerful symbol. Looking into the past and a visualization of possible futures, the article traces the resets of the so-called Doomsday Clock of the Atomic Scientists as securitization/desecuritization moves with a global referent object. While the Scientists' securitization arguments have pleaded to rationality, the symbol of the Clock has worked to evoke people's sensibilities. The article reasons that while images and symbols can facilitate, or impede, securitization moves, it is difficult to fathom how images, without anchorage, could bring about securitization that would not have been institutionalized previously.
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| 6 |
ID:
175450
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| Summary/Abstract |
Few researchers have suggested models for visualising particular strategies applied during wartime. The authors present a new analytical, visual methodology for the conduct of war. It refines Arthur F. Lykke Jr.’s definition of strategy, which emphasises the interaction of three components: ends, ways and means. Moreover, the framework introduced distinguishes between military and civilian components, public declaration and action as well as use and reserve. Thus, a conceptual framework is offered to the scholarly community that aims to both analyse and visualise a party’s true strategy during an armed conflict and that is, moreover, applicable to both regular and irregular parties in a specific operational theatre. Furthermore, this methodology supports the teaching of strategic dimensions in an academic setting.
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