Modeling expert knowledge in the mediation domain: a middle-out approach to design ODR ontologies

In this paper we describe the steps taken to model expert knowledge within the mediation domain as the basis for the design of the Mediation Core Ontology (MCO), of which we also offer a first outline of its present stage of development. MCO is created from scratch by eliciting practical knowledge from mediation experts to identify the basic working concepts of the domain. MCO offers initial support towards knowledge acquisition and reasoning and, in later steps, will serve as a general basis for the development of different mediation domain and sub-domain ontologies to be used by the ONTOMEDIA mediation platform, currently also under development

Inside/Outside and around: complexity and the relational ethics of global life

It has become expected of policy-makers, pundits, and scholars to refer to a whole raft of global dilemmas—from the economic downturn to climate change—as complex. The complexity of these challenges intimates a pattern of interactions marked by sharp discontinuities and exponential transformations triggered by incremental changes. How can one act ethically and politically in such a turbulent environment? Proponents of Complexity Thinking (CT) have responded to this query by drawing attention to the radical relationality of global life, which contests the Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism informing the IR mainstream. The study demonstrates that the ethical models inherent in such a “complexified” outlook are relational. Therefore, the ethical understanding of political action on the world stage—both cognitively and affectively—is simultaneously shaped and mediated by ethical obligations and commitments to others, the structure and content of which is acquired through the very relationships by which ethical obligations and commitments are formed and justified. Such relational ethics simultaneously critiques the atomistic individualism dominating the IR mainstream and reimagine the international as a dynamic space for dialogical learning, which promises a world that is less hegemonic, more democratic, and equitable

ODR, ontologies, and web 2.0

Online communities and institutions create new spaces for interaction, but also open new avenues for the emergence of grievances, claims, and disputes. Consequently, online dispute resolution (ODR) procedures are core to these new online worlds. But can ODR mechanisms provide sufficient levels of reputation, trust, and enforceability for it to become mainstream? This contribution introduces the new approaches to ODR and provides a description of the design and structure of Ontomedia, a web-based platform to facilitate online mediation in different domain

Method for Detecting Far-Right Extremist Communities on Social Media

Far-right extremist communities actively promote their ideological preferences on social media. This provides researchers with opportunities to study these communities online. However, to explore these opportunities one requires a way to identify the far-right extremists’ communities in an automated way. Having analyzed the subject area of far-right extremist communities, we identified three groups of factors that influence the effectiveness of the research work. These are a group of theoretical, methodological, and instrumental factors. We developed and implemented a unique algorithm of calendar-correlation analysis (CCA) to search for specific online communities. We based CCA on a hybrid calendar correlation approach identifying potential far-right communities by characteristic changes in group activity around key dates of events that are historically crucial to those communities. The developed software module includes several functions designed to automatically search, process, and analyze social media data. In the current paper we present a process diagram showing CCA’s mechanism of operation and its relationship to elements of automated search software. Furthermore, we outline the limiting factors of the developed algorithm. The algorithm was tested on data from the Russian social network VKontakte. Two experimental data sets were formed: 259 far-right communities and the 49 most popular (not far-right) communities. In both cases, we calculated the type II error for two mutually exclusive hypotheses—far-right affiliation and no affiliation. Accordingly, for the first sample, Я = 0.81. For the second sample, Я = 0.02. The presented CCA algorithm was more effective at identifying far-right communities belonging to the alt-right and Nazi ideologies compared to the neo-pagan or manosphere communities. We expect that the CCA algorithm can be effectively used to identify other movements within far-right extremist communities when an appropriate foundation of expert knowledge is provided to the algorithm

The Time of Liberation: Angela Davis\u27s Prison Abolition and Giorgio Agamben\u27s Coming Community

The project explores the ethical, social, and political subject of incarceration. I investigate Angela Davis’s multifaceted critique of the prison industrial complex – focusing primarily on the tenets of racism, classism, and capitalism – and take an interdisciplinary approach to advancing her call for prison abolition by way of Giorgio Agamben’s radical adjustments to traditional discourses about ontology in his work The Coming Community. Agamben’s rendering of ontology in terms of impotentiality and indifference, when put in dialogue with Davis, exposes latent and unexplored philosophic suggestions Davis is making – specifically regarding a non-normative interpretation of temporality and an operation of liberation best understood as indefinite rather than finite and attainable. Ultimately, the poetic re-thinking Agamben applies to ontology and its political consequences serve as one blueprint for the kind of cognitive re-orientation vital for the prison abolitionist project: abolishing the conditions which allow for the prison industrial complex to be an unquestioned, inevitable part of social reality. Experimenting with thinkers that have seemingly disparate concerns and styles creates a space for more imaginative approaches to potentially mitigating limited, oppressive modes of thought, practices, and institutions

The Name is a Guest of the Substance

I am a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, writer, researcher and educator with over 15 years working experience in the arts. My upbringing in a multi-racial, multinational, working class family guides the perspectives I seek to uplift across a variety of disciplines in my work. For the decade prior to pursuing my MFA at UMass, I devised, designed and performed my own original works of theater and installation in New York City at a variety of professional venues. In May 2022 I was accepted into the phD program in the History department of UMass Amherst where I will study 20th and 21st century American history and contemporary arts visual culture through a public history lens.https://scholarworks.umass.edu/art_mfa_projects/1003/thumbnail.jp

Military, Inc. Private Military Companies And State-Centrism In International Relations.

This study sheds light on the relationship between military privatisation and state-centrism in international relations. The growth of the private military industry has led many to consider the operational implications of the military privatisation program, focusing on the merits of the industry and its inadequate regulation. Few have considered the ontological implications of military privatisation; that as the state outsources what many consider to be its core function and purpose – public security – military privatisation challenges the nature of the state and its central role in international relations. This thesis seeks to further the ontological argument by employing an English School approach to international relations. This approach allows for the puzzle to be interrogated at multiple levels and within three separate yet overlapping realms; the International System, International Society, and World Society. In contrast to existing research, I find that the state remains central to international relations. I conclude that although private military companies do not challenge the notion of state-centrism in international relations, the English School remains a powerful tool for exploring international phenomena. I also demonstrate the need for international relations theory to account for the changing identity of security actors and interplay between states

Must International Legal Pedagogy Remain Eurocentric?

Mainstream international law is Eurocentric. Throughout the past half millennia, no territory beyond Europe was safe from jus gentium's striking capability to legitimize the intrusion of European civilizational precepts. Beginning with the Americas but quickly shifting to Africa and Asia, each continent was a battleground for the penetration of a provincial knowledge system. In this paper, I explore the implications of Eurocentrism for international legal pedagogy. While textbook authors now pay homage to other civilizations, their effusions are ornamental only. Instead of supporting epistemological equivalency, they centre European international law throughout their works, exorcising the brutalities of European history that generated the law in question. After setting out the dilemma, I outline three approaches towards transforming international legal pedagogy that capitalize on the decolonization movement. Each method builds on the premise that, without epistemic diversity, legal pedagogy will continue to rationalize European international law's predatory impulse

Violence of war, ontopology, and the instrumental and performative constitution of the political community

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from CUP via the DOI in this record.This paper considers a neglected question in International Relations, namely how violence of war contributes to the constitution of the political community at the intersection between war and peace. It exposes limitations of means-ends, instrumental understanding of war violence due to the overlooking of violence’s performative attributes stemming from the centrality of bodily injuries in war. The instrumental violence on which the constitution of the political community is grounded finds expression in an order of representation that can be termed ontopology, and a pervasive—circular—relationship between ontopology and violence insofar as ontopology has inspired extreme forms of human behaviour and also been used to justify violence as a means to enact an ontopological goal. Yet, recognising the role of bodily injuries in the course of fighting allows for a more complete understanding of war. Crucially it enables an interpretation of the structure of war as a relation between war’s interior content—casualties in war—and the exterior, verbal issues standing outside it (pertaining to security, identity, sovereignty, authority, ideology), that lead to a surrogate contest of re-imagining political community in the process of which performative power of violence contributes directly to the emerging post-war peace and laws that justify it