Event-based media monitoring methodology for Human Rights Watch

Executive Summary This report, prepared by a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota for Human Rights Watch (HRW), investigates the use of event-based media monitoring (EMM) to review its application, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and offer suggestions on how HRW can better utilize EMM in its own work. Media monitoring systems include both human-operated (manual) and automated systems, both of which we review throughout the report. The process begins with the selection of news sources, proceeds to the development of a coding manual (for manual searches) or “dictionary” (for automated searches), continues with gathering data, and concludes with the coding of news stories. EMM enables the near real-time tracking of events reported by the media, allowing researchers to get a sense of the scope of and trends in an event, but there are limits to what EMM can accomplish on its own. The media will only cover a portion of a given event, so information will always be missing from EMM data. EMM also introduces research biases of various kinds; mitigating these biases requires careful selection of media sources and clearly defined coding manuals or dictionaries. In manual EMM, coding the gathered data requires human researchers to apply codebook rules in order to collect consistent data from each story they read. In automated EMM, computers apply the dictionary directly to the news stories, automatically picking up the desired information. There are trade-offs in each system. Automated EMM can code stories far more quickly, but the software may incorrectly code stories, requiring manual corrections. Conversely, manual EMM allows for a more nuanced analysis, but the investment of time and effort may diminish the tool’s utility. We believe that both manual and automated EMM, when deployed correctly, can effectively support human rights research and advocacy

Inferring Mechanisms for Global Constitutional Progress

Constitutions help define domestic political orders, but are known to be influenced by two international mechanisms: one that reflects global temporal trends in legal development, and another that reflects international network dynamics such as shared colonial history. We introduce the provision space; the growing set of all legal provisions existing in the world's constitutions over time. Through this we uncover a third mechanism influencing constitutional change: hierarchical dependencies between legal provisions, under which the adoption of essential, fundamental provisions precedes more advanced provisions. This third mechanism appears to play an especially important role in the emergence of new political rights, and may therefore provide a useful roadmap for advocates of those rights. We further characterise each legal provision in terms of the strength of these mechanisms

Connecting Dream Networks Across Cultures

Many species dream, yet there remain many open research questions in the study of dreams. The symbolism of dreams and their interpretation is present in cultures throughout history. Analysis of online data sources for dream interpretation using network science leads to understanding symbolism in dreams and their associated meaning. In this study, we introduce dream interpretation networks for English, Chinese and Arabic that represent different cultures from various parts of the world. We analyze communities in these networks, finding that symbols within a community are semantically related. The central nodes in communities give insight about cultures and symbols in dreams. The community structure of different networks highlights cultural similarities and differences. Interconnections between different networks are also identified by translating symbols from different languages into English. Structural correlations across networks point out relationships between cultures. Similarities between network communities are also investigated by analysis of sentiment in symbol interpretations. We find that interpretations within a community tend to have similar sentiment. Furthermore, we cluster communities based on their sentiment, yielding three main categories of positive, negative, and neutral dream symbols.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Knowledge Organization WissOrg'17 of theGerman Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO),30th November - 1st December 2017, Freie Universität Berlin

Wissensorganisation is the name of a series of biennial conferences / workshops with a long tradition, organized by the German chapter of the International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO). The 15th conference in this series, held at Freie Universität Berlin, focused on knowledge organization for the digital humanities. Structuring, and interacting with, large data collections has become a major issue in the digital humanities. In these proceedings, various aspects of knowledge organization in the digital humanities are discussed, and the authors of the papers show how projects in the digital humanities deal with knowledge organization.Wissensorganisation ist der Name einer Konferenzreihe mit einer langjährigen Tradition, die von der Deutschen Sektion der International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO) organisiert wird. Die 15. Konferenz dieser Reihe, die an der Freien Universität Berlin stattfand, hatte ihren Schwerpunkt im Bereich Wissensorganisation und Digital Humanities. Die Strukturierung von und die Interaktion mit großen Datenmengen ist ein zentrales Thema in den Digital Humanities. In diesem Konferenzband werden verschiedene Aspekte der Wissensorganisation in den Digital Humanities diskutiert, und die Autoren der einzelnen Beiträge zeigen, wie die Digital Humanities mit Wissensorganisation umgehen

Evolution of Cultural Traits Occurs at Similar Relative Rates in Different World Regions

A fundamental issue in understanding human diversity is whether or not there are regular patterns and processes involved in cultural change. Theoretical and mathematical models of cultural evolution have been developed and are increasingly being used and assessed in empirical analyses. Here we test the hypothesis that the rates of change of features of human socio-cultural organization are governed by general rules. One prediction of this hypothesis is that different cultural traits will tend to evolve at similar relative rates in different world regions, despite the unique historical backgrounds of groups inhabiting these regions. We used phylogenetic comparative methods and systematic cross-cultural data to assess how different socio-cultural traits changed in 1) island Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and 2) sub-Saharan Africa. The relative rates of change in these two regions are significantly correlated. Furthermore, cultural traits that are more directly related to external environmental conditions evolve more slowly than traits related to social structures. This is consistent with the idea that a form of purifying selection is acting with greater strength on these more environmentally-linked traits. These results suggest that despite contingent historical events and the role of humans as active agents in the historical process, culture does indeed evolve in ways that can be predicted from general principles