Computational International Relations What Can Programming, Coding and Internet Research Do for the Discipline?
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Date
2019
Authors
Ünver, Hamid Akın
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dış Politika ve Barış Araştırmaları Merkezi, İhsan Doğramacı Barış Vakfı
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Abstract
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 (heartrate 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’, 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 in building truly multi-method research design.
Description
Keywords
Methodology, Computer science, Digital research, Internet
Turkish CoHE Thesis Center URL
Fields of Science
Citation
6
WoS Q
N/A
Scopus Q
Q1
Source
Volume
8
Issue
2
Start Page
157
End Page
182