Big Data for Social Sciences: Measuring patterns of human behavior through large-scale mobile phone data

Through seven publications this dissertation shows how anonymized mobile phone data can contribute to the social good and provide insights into human behaviour on a large scale. The size of the datasets analysed ranges from 500 million to 300 billion phone records, covering millions of people. The key contributions are two-fold: 1. Big Data for Social Good: Through prediction algorithms the results show how mobile phone data can be useful to predict important socio-economic indicators, such as income, illiteracy and poverty in developing countries. Such knowledge can be used to identify where vulnerable groups in society are, reduce economic shocks and is a critical component for monitoring poverty rates over time. Further, the dissertation demonstrates how mobile phone data can be used to better understand human behaviour during large shocks in society, exemplified by an analysis of data from the terror attack in Norway and a natural disaster on the south-coast in Bangladesh. This work leads to an increased understanding of how information spreads, and how millions of people move around. The intention is to identify displaced people faster, cheaper and more accurately than existing survey-based methods. 2. Big Data for efficient marketing: Finally, the dissertation offers an insight into how anonymised mobile phone data can be used to map out large social networks, covering millions of people, to understand how products spread inside these networks. Results show that by including social patterns and machine learning techniques in a large-scale marketing experiment in Asia, the adoption rate is increased by 13 times compared to the approach used by experienced marketers. A data-driven and scientific approach to marketing, through more tailored campaigns, contributes to less irrelevant offers for the customers, and better cost efficiency for the companies.Comment: 166 pages, PHD thesi

IMPROVISED EXPLOSIVE DEVICES

Shortly after 6 p.m. on 17 February 1880, Stepan Khalturin lit a fuse in the cellar of the Russian tsar’s Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Around 15 minutes later, the fuse initiated 145 kg of explosives that the carpenter had smuggled into the palace on behalf of the revolutionary group, The People’s Will. The resulting explosion killed and injured around 50 people, many of them servants

Detecting climate adaptation with mobile network data in Bangladesh: anomalies in communication, mobility and consumption patterns during cyclone Mahasen

Large-scale data from digital infrastructure, like mobile phone networks, provides rich information on the behavior of millions of people in areas affected by climate stress. Using anonymized data on mobility and calling behavior from 5.1 million Grameenphone users in Barisal Division and Chittagong District, Bangladesh, we investigate the effect of Cyclone Mahasen, which struck Barisal and Chittagong in May 2013. We characterize spatiotemporal patterns and anomalies in calling frequency, mobile recharges, and population movements before, during and after the cyclone. While it was originally anticipated that the analysis might detect mass evacuations and displacement from coastal areas in the weeks following the storm, no evidence was found to suggest any permanent changes in population distributions. We detect anomalous patterns of mobility both around the time of early warning messages and the storm’s landfall, showing where and when mobility occurred as well as its characteristics. We find that anomalous patterns of mobility and calling frequency correlate with rainfall intensity (r = .75, p < 0.05) and use calling frequency to construct a spatiotemporal distribution of cyclone impact as the storm moves across the affected region. Likewise, from mobile recharge purchases we show the spatiotemporal patterns in people’s preparation for the storm in vulnerable areas. In addition to demonstrating how anomaly detection can be useful for modeling human adaptation to climate extremes, we also identify several promising avenues for future improvement of disaster planning and response activities

A critical discourse analysis of news reports on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in selected Arab and western newspapers

As one of the most violent, ideological and intractable conflicts in modern history, sited in a very sensitive and strategic region, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has always been under the spotlight of media and politicians. The conflict is almost a constant item in the coverage of news outlets, especially since the outbreak of the spiraling violence that marked the end of the peace process and the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising in the fall of 2000. The discourse of the conflict is as ideological and controversial as the conflict itself. Even news reporting, which is governed by values of truthfulness, accuracy, balance, impartiality and integrity, has always been the object of scrutiny and criticism by members of both sides who often accuse newspapers of bias against them. The discourse of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been the object of a number of academic studies. This thesis aims to contribute to this body of knowledge about the discourse of the conflict by critically analysing the discourse of news reports on selected events of the second Intifada, both from cross-cultural and inter-cultural perspectives, by exploring the way Arab and Western newspapers report on some recent events of the conflict and the way different newspapers issued in the UK cover the same events

Framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : a case-study analysis of the Irish national 'opinion leader' press - July 2000 to July 2004

This case study analyses how four Irish "opinion leader" newspapers - The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune - constructed the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the four-year period from July 2000 to July 2004. A primary objective of this case study is to overcome some of the more prominent theoretical inadequacies that have characterised existing research in this area to date. Principally, because existing research has been mostly limited to analysing the American media context and to a lesser extent, the British and other core European contexts, very few analyses have been undertaken on the framing of foreign conflicts by media outlets that operate within entirely different national environments, such as the Irish media environment. Chapter I argues that already existing research has mostly been confined to "testing" propaganda, indexing, hegemonic and political control hypotheses regarding media roles in covering foreign conflicts. These hypotheses are based on assumptions that foreign conflict coverage is mostly influenced by extrinsic structural factors and that, therefore, the media's role is largely restricted to that of acting as conduits for government propaganda and elite perspectives. Consequently, research guided by these hypotheses neglects to investigate fully the influences exerted by the surrounding politico-cultural and media contexts on the various roles adopted by the media when reporting on different types of foreign conflicts. William A. Gamson and his colleagues' model of social constructivist media analysis was chosen as the most appropriate model for fulfilling the objectives of this research. This model analyses media coverage trends as outcomes of contested news construction processes that are potentially influenced by a range of different extrinsic environmental factors and intrinsic media, or news factors. This case study consisted of four different, yet interrelated, stages of research. The first stage consisted of a literature-based contextual analysis of the historical and political environments characterising the arena of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, as well as the arenas of Irish-Israeli and Irish-Palestinian relations. The second research stage involved a longitudinal and descriptive analysis of a representative sampling of coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune during the period from July 2000 to July 2004. The third stage consisted of qualitative frame analysis of news discourses. The fourth and final stage of research involved the undertaking of a series of exploratory, qualitative interviews with key media, political/diplomatic and NGO actors. Chapter 3 briefly outlines how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been historically manifested as a highly unequal, contested and multi-dimensional conflict. Chapter 4 analyses the potential contextual influences exerted by Irish political culture and foreign policy-makin(I-1t1ra ditions on the roles adopted by Irish media. It concludes that Ireland's "small state" and post-colonial status, its consequent lack of "hard power", or "vital" foreign policy interests in the Middle East, as well as its official dependency on UN and EU foreign policy perspectives, are likely to have exerted significant contextual influences on the ways in which the sampled newspapers covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Chapter 5 explores the ways in which the changed political environment surrounding Israeli-Palestinian relations during the period of July 2000 to July 2004 had significant constructivist implications for how international media, including the Irish media, covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This case study's descriptive analysis of randomly sampled coverage by The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune during the period of July 2000 to July 2004 generated a number of significant findings. Firstly, it was concluded that the regular patterns of attention that the sampled newspapers devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were reflective of the dynamics and politics of that conflict itself, as well as its ongoing international resonance. However, this coverage was frequently of a semi- or non-prominent nature, while the sampled newspapers accorded only miniscule amounts of frontpage, analytical and editorial attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was concluded that Ireland's "small state" status and its lack of appreciable national or foreign policy interests in Israel and the Palestinian territories influenced these latter trends. However, in addition to the formative influences exerted by the national politico-cultural context, media contextual factors and intrinsic news factors also had discernible constructivist implications for news outcomes. For instance, the finding that the majority of news items were sourced from foreign-based jourrialists and news agencies was related to the operation of news factors, such as editorial judgements and criteria, as well as reporting norms and values. Most significantly, the intense competition characterising the Irish media market overall, as well as the lack of historical grounding of Irish media within a "tradition" of foreign news analysis, exerted substantial influence on these news-sourcing patterns by constraining the sampled newspapers' commitment to foreign news coverage. In relation to the findings generated by this case study's topical analysis, it was also concluded that the operation of news factors, in relation to the wider politico-cultural context, influenced the ways in which the sampled newspapers topicalised the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, while news values tilted editorial decisions towards covering "conflict"/"political violence" topics, these values also served to reduce newspaper coverage of "peace" and other topics. Additionally, politico-cultural factors, such as the relative isolationist and dependent nature of Irish foreign policy worldviews, supplied an important context within which the sampled newspapers neglected to appreciably cover the international diplomaticsecurity context surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, the low levels of coverage devoted to domestic Israeli and Palestinian topics reflected Ireland's lack of any "vital" interests in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its relatively weak politico-cultural and personal ties with Israel and the Palestinians. Finally, in relation to source access and representation trends, it was found that the sampled newspapers tended to be more or less contested sites (albeit unequal sites). variously featuring the assertions of competing Israeli and Palestinian politicaU"official" sources, rather than exclusively transmitting so-called consensual, hegemonic and elitist constructions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This emerged as a key finding of this research, as it challenges one of the primary theoretical assumptions of the propaganda, indexing, hegemonic and political control hypotheses - namely, that politically-powerful and economically resourceful conflict protagonists consistently have greater levels of media access than politically weaker protagonists, simply by virtue of the power disparities that pertain between them. Instead, this thesis argues that, within highly contested foreign conflict arenas, the protagonist sources' degree of access to international media attention is best viewed as a constructed and achieved outcome, which changes in line with developments in the wider political and media environments and changes in the operation of news factors. Thus, this case-study's descriptive content analysis concluded that, overall, the sampled newspapers' sourcing trends, as well as their patterns of issue-attention and issue-topicalisation, are best analysed not as the pre-determined outcomes of structural power relations and resources, but as the socially constructed outcomes of interactions between relevant politico-cultural contexts, the wider media environment and a range of news factors (such as journalistic conventions, values and norms). This case study's qualitative frame analysis of newspaper discourses also adopted this social constructivist focus. The key finding of this analysis was that divergent rates of access and representation were achieved by partisan Israeli law and order/terrorism frames and partisan Palestinian injustice/defiance frames across the sampled newspapers. Jewish injustice/national homeland frames were virtually excluded from the sampled newspapers. The Irish Times and the Sunday Independent tended to be more favourable towards including law and order/terrorism frames, while the Sunday Tribune and the Irish Independent featured Palestinian injustice/defiance frames more frequently than law and order/terrorism frames. In contrast, Palestinian injustice/defiance frames were entirely absent from the Sunday Independent sample. Another significant trend that emerged from this frame analysis was that non-partisan frames; namely, reconciliation/dual rights frames, nihilistic violence/warring tribes frames and regional stability/international security frames - were relatively under-represented within each sampled newspaper. Taken together, therefore, these frame analytic findings confirm this thesis' theoretical critique of propaganda, indexing, hegemonic and political control perspectives. These latter perspectives hypothesise that external political and structural factors, such as state propaganda, elite hegemony and/or political information controls, determine foreign news coverage in ways that reduce the media's role to that of monolithically framing foreign coverage within the confines of hegemonic and elitist ideologies. In contrast, this case study's primary theoretical argument is that a social constructivist and multi-variable perspective is inherently more appropriate for undertaking analyses of media foreign coverage roles. Principally, rather than assuming, a priori, that extrinsic factors wholly determine news, this perspective enables the researcher to explore the varying media influences exerted over time by different contexts and intrinsic news factors

Beyond the CNN effect : towards a constitutive understanding of media power in international politics

Temaet for denne avhandlingen er nyhetsmedias makt og innflytelse over staters utenrikspolitiske handlinger og prioriteringer i internasjonal politikk. I motsetningen til mye annen forskning konkluderer avhandlingen med at medias makt er betydelig. Avhandlingens hovedsiktemål er å utvikle en teoretisk modell for å forstå denne innflytelsen, samt å dokumentere relevansen av denne modellen med utgangspunkt i et større norsk og internasjonalt empirisk materiale. Avhandlingens funn er blant andre: - Den globale nyhetsdekningen av internasjonale politiske forhold, er i betydelig grad uniform, og preges av det doktoranden omtaler som medias innebygde kommunikasjonslogikk (”communicative system”). - Denne kommunikasjonslogikken gir i vesentlig grad forrang til saksfelt, hendelser og trusler som har visuelle, kortsiktige og dramatiske kvaliteter. - Utenrikspolitikken tar merke av dette ved at de deler av den internasjonale virkeligheten som ikke harmonerer med denne grunnleggende kommunikasjonslogikken, nedprioriteres og i noen grad usynliggjøres på den utenrikspolitiske agendaen. - Norske utenrikspolitiske beslutningstakere er i økende grad orientert mot nyhetsmedias virkelighetsgjengivelse i sin tilnærming og sine debatter om utenrikspolitikk. - Norske nyhetsmediers dekning av krig er i stor grad preget av de samme faktorer som annen internasjonal dekning, men norske medier vinkler sakene i stor grad i tråd med norske nasjonale særtrekk og utenrikspolitiske selvbilder, med mindre vekt på krigshandlinger og utvidet dekning av humanitære forhold. Norsk utenrikspolitisk journalistikk må i noen grad beskrives som ”offisiøs”. Media bedriver lite selvstendig kritisk dekning av norsk utenrikspolitikk, og ivaretar i noen grad utenrikspolitikkens ”doxa” (dvs. forsvar av tradisjonell norsk tilnærming til omverdenen)

The times and spaces of racist violence: pathways to violence in protest against Swedish migrant accommodation, 2012–2017

All explanations of racist violence, across historical periods and national contexts, have to face the tension between diversity and unity. On one hand, racist violence is very diverse, involving a wide range of actors, motives and means. On the other, diverse cases of racist violence typically occur at approximately the same time, against the same targets, and in the same places. Rather than solve this tension, existing research reinforce it by disaggregating individual cases into narrower, decontextualized categories, or by disregarding diversity altogether. This thesis approaches the problem of unity and diversity by locating cases of racist violence in time and space, examining how attacks emerge from causes located in meso-level interactions between different assailants, and between assailants and wider networks of racist protesters and their opponents in bounded geographical areas. Applying the processual framework from social movement theory, the thesis studies these interactions in the context of local protest against migrant accommodation in Sweden between 2012 and 2017. The thesis thereby observes a wide variety of assailants, including radical right activists, youth gangs and “ordinary” residents, interacting with local politicians and government authorities, moderate organizations and mainstream political parties across 85 local cases. In order to study these cases, the thesis combines protest event analysis of nearly 3000 violent and nonviolent events with qualitative case studies based on primary and secondary data from municipal and court documents, social movement organizations and political parties, social media, and 61 interviews with actors on different positions vis-à-vis migrant accommodation. The main outcome of the thesis is a typology of six pathways to violence, each consisting of a specific combination of causal mechanisms and occurring across a variety of empirical settings. The typology is based on the distinction of three different temporal sequences between violent and nonviolent protest, and two spatial orientations in the framing and organization of protest. Across four empirical chapters, the thesis develops the central causal mechanisms within each pathway, locates them in the course of the empirical cases, and shows how different pathways are associated with contextual conditions at the local and national level. The thesis details the processes through which violence emerges out of weakly coordinated sets of locals, private networks, radical right milieus, and cells of violent specialists, in parallel with, after, or independently of, nonviolent protest. The thesis contributes to the study of racist violence, and to the study of political violence more broadly. In the literature on racist violence, the thesis contributes to the bridging of unity and diversity by contextualizing instances of violence in their broader spatial and temporal setting. It also contributes to the interpretation of contextual causes, and to the interpretation of different types of actors in relation to violent protest. In the literature on political violence, the thesis contributes an analysis of violence in contexts where protest is weakly coordinated, informal and largely occurs in private settings. It thereby helps extend the analysis of political violence away from a focus on repeated public confrontations, and onto the dynamic between public and private interactions