Geospatial data analysis in Russia’s geoweb

The chapter examines the role of geospatial data in Russia’s online ecosystem. Facilitated by the rise of geographic information systems and user-generated content, the distribution of geospatial data has blurred the line between physical spaces and their virtual representations. The chapter discusses different sources of these data available for Digital Russian Studies (e.g., social data and crowdsourced databases) together with the novel techniques for extracting geolocation from various data formats (e.g., textual documents and images). It also scrutinizes different ways of using these data, varying from mapping the spatial distribution of social and political phenomena to investigating the use of geotag data for cultural practices’ digitization to exploring the use of geoweb for narrating individual and collective identities online

Belt & Road Initiative in Times of ‘Synchronized Downturn’

Nearly ten years since the official launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an understanding of what the initiative’s objectives are consolidated. However, the short-, mid-, and long-term implications of the initiative are less clear. This is reflected in academic research, as well as in policy-oriented publications stemming from the global think-tank sector. This collection adds to this debate by offering a glimpse into selected aspects of BRI and its development, including the applicability of existing theories of trade to the case of BRI, the specificity of investment modes associated with BRI, sustainability, SDGs, socio-cultural issues, and many other implications. Due to its focus on diverse aspects of BRI, this collection will be of interest to students of international economics, international relations, and related subjects

The dark side of the internet: a study about representations of the deep web and the Tor network in the British press

The imaginary of the Deep Web is commonly associated with crime, crypto markets and immoral content. However, the best-known Deep Web system, the Tor Network, is a technology developed to protect people’s privacy through online anonymity, in the context of the contemporary culture of surveillance, thus enabling civil liberties. To understand this contradiction, this thesis looks at the British press representation of the Deep Web and the Tor Network. An extensive empirical research study unveils how newspapers portray these technologies, by looking at meanings, uses and users. In order to meet this goal, this research conducts a content analysis of 833 articles about Deep Web technologies published between 2001 and 2017 by six British newspapers – tabloids Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Sun, and quality newspapers Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Times – and a critical discourse analysis of 58 reports mentioning the Tor Network, issued by the same newspapers, between 2008 and 2017. The findings demonstrate that the British press represents the Deep Web in a sharply negative way, through negative concepts, definitions and associations. This portrayal attributes opacity to the Deep Web, engendering distrust of its uses and propagating user stereotypes that reflect an overall criminalisation of privacy. Also, the press presents a hyper- panic approach by consistently connecting this new medium to well-known social anxieties and portraying these technologies as undesirable, immoral and illegal. Hyper-panic is the theoretical contribution of this thesis and can be explained as the way in which media panic (the Deep Web, in this case) multiplies moral panic (for instance, terrorism, paedophilia and drug consumption). Specifically about Tor, this work concludes that the media present multiple aspects of this system, from discussing the ways in which one can enable civil liberties, to condemning criminals hiding behind technology, addressing the inherent ambivalence connected to the uses of online anonymity, i.e. it is neither completely bad nor completely good. The general synopsis about Tor, however, is still negative. Finally, the consistent association by the British press between the Deep Web and criminal and antisocial behaviours promotes a dissociation between the Deep Web and the Web itself, in that cyberspace is separated between negative uses (the Deep Web) and positive uses (the Web), instead of being understood as a nuanced whole

The new cold war and the rise of the 21st‐century infrastructure state

From Wiley via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: received 2020-03-07, rev-recd 2021-05-03, accepted 2021-06-14, pub-electronic 2021-08-02Article version: VoRPublication status: PublishedFunder: American Association of Geographers; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010262Funder: Association of Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002367Funder: University of Colorado Boulder; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100007493Abstract: The unipolar international order led by the USA has given way to a multipolar order with the emergence of China as a great power competitor. According to many commentators, the deterioration of Sino–US relations in recent years heralds a “new Cold War.” The new Cold War differs from its namesake in many respects, and in this paper we focus on its novel territorial logic. Containing the USSR was the overriding objective of American foreign policy for nearly four decades, but in contrast, the USA and China are engaged in geopolitical‐economic competition to integrate territory into value chains anchored by their domestic lead firms through the financing and construction of transnational infrastructure (e.g., transportation networks and regional energy grids). We show this competition poses risks as well as opportunities for small states to articulate and realise spatial objectives. We present cases from Nepal and Laos that demonstrate that by hedging between China and the USA and its partners, their governments are able to pursue spatial objectives. In order to achieve them, however, they must implement significant reforms or state restructuring. The result is the emergence of what we term the 21st‐century infrastructure state, which seeks to mobilise foreign capital for infrastructure projects designed to enhance transnational connectivity

University for the Creative Arts staff research 2011

This publication brings together a selection of the University’s current research. The contributions foreground areas of research strength including still and moving image research, applied arts and crafts, as well as emerging fields of investigations such as design and architecture. It also maps thematic concerns across disciplinary areas that focus on models and processes of creative practice, value formations and processes of identification through art and artefacts as well as cross-cultural connectivity. Dr. Seymour Roworth-Stoke

Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia

Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia offers a new understanding of how technological innovation, geopolitical ambitions, and social change converge and cross-fertilize one another through infrastructure projects in Asia. This volume powerfully illustrates the multifaceted connections between infrastructure and three global paradigm shifts: climate change, digitalization, and China’s emergence as a superpower. Drawing on fine-grained analyses of airports, highways, pipelines, and digital communication systems, the book investigates infrastructure both “from above,” as perceived by experts and decision makers, and “from below,” as experienced by middlemen, laborers, and everyday users. In so doing, it provides groundbreaking insights into infrastructure’s planning, production, and operation. Focusing on cities and regions across Asia, the volume combines ten tightly interwoven case studies, from the Bosphorus to Beijing and from the Indonesian archipelago to the Arctic. Written by leading global infrastructure experts in the fields of anthropology, architecture, geography, history, science and technology studies, and urban planning, the book establishes a dialogue between scholarly approaches to infrastructure and the more operational perspective of the professionals who design and build it. This multidisciplinary method sheds light on the practitioners’ mindset, while also attending to the materiality and agency of the infrastructures that they create. Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia is conceived as an act of translation: linking up related—yet thus far disconnected—research across a variety of academic disciplines, while making those insights accessible to a wider audience of students, infrastructure professionals, and the general public

(Re)producing the logistical future: ethnography, infrastructure and the making of Georgia’s global connections

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the making of logistical connectivity. The ethnography follows the project to transform the village of Anaklia on the Georgian Black Sea coast into a major logistical hub set to include a deep sea port, a smart city, and a special economic zone. This development, supported by the Georgian state and managed by a private multinational corporation was commonly referred to as “the project of the century” and understood to be vital for the country’s transformation into a transit corridor, an element of the Belt and Road Initiative that would forge new connections between Europe and Asia. Over the course of the ethnography, however, the project came to a halt. By charting the development and eventual demise of this ambitious infrastructural effort, this research brings together a theoretical and political focus on the geography of logistical capitalism with an ethnographic attention to practices of future-making. This thesis figures Anaklia as simultaneously an index and a product of the various processes that are brought together in the reproduction of what I call the “logistical future”. Two broad concerns run through the analysis. One is the observation that the creation of Anaklia as a future-oriented logistical space required copious amounts of manual, affective and administrative labour, even prior to its construction, by security guards, manual workers, managers, local residents, public relations professionals and others. The uses, intersections and dislocations of these different forms of labour are a central focus of this inquiry. Second, to understand how the village of Anaklia came to acquire the remarkable significance it did, attention needs to be paid to the ways in which infrastructural efforts in the present form as accretions of Georgia’s recent history. The logistical future, therefore, is by no means a coherent, linear horizon, rather it is a container for multiple temporal orientations sutured together through great efforts by all manners of actors committed to make logistics look smooth

Records of Disaster: Media Infrastructures and Climate Change

'Records of Disasters: Media Infrastructures and Climate Change' explores how environmental disasters manifest and inscribe themselves in infrastructures. By turning to infrastructures, their logic and functioning, collapse and malfunction, the volume reveals their potential as fragile material witnesses to and of disasters. As climate change is unequally distributed across continuous dynamics and events, time scales and spatial registers, infrastructures can be understood as proxies or seismographs mediating different spatio-temporal layers that make these dynamics tangible. Disaster is made operational by negotiating what is defined as such, and under which geopolitical conditions. What connects melting glaciers and the knowledge from ice cores to the mapping of the ocean floor and the extraction of resources in the deep-sea? How can infrastructures be thought in time and "critical proximity", and how do they bear witness to colonial pasts and presents? The volume proposes an analytical perspective on infrastructures as multi-layered witnesses to climate change, bringing together scientific and artistic approaches, students and scholars from different disciplines