Dennis: Big Data Revolution, Methodological Evolution

We know your dreamsAre academic researchers being left behind by their commercial counterparts? Is the rigour and transparency of social science being sacrificed in the name of revolution? ‘The Big Data Revolution’ workshop hosted by Innocentive on 12 September 2012 offered an excellent chance to weigh up these questions. The workshop brought together a mix of commercial, academic and government researchers including representatives from Amazon, City University, Royal Bank of Scotland, and the US Department of Homeland Security.

James Dennis, NPCU doctoral candidate, offers his thoughts here.

Aslan and Dennis: BBC Olympic Project presentation at CIBAR 2012

Billur Aslan and James Dennis will present our ongoing study of global audience reactions to the 2012 London Olympics at CIBAR 2012 in Manchester on 11 November.  The annual conference of the Confederation of International Broadcasters’ Audience Research Services, hosted this year by BBC Global News, is the main international forum for discussion of audience research among public service broadcasters. There will be other presentations from Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe, Gallup and the BBC themselves.

CIBAR have generously given the project an entire session, and we hope anyone in Manchester is able to attend. Thanks to Marie Gillespie for convening the panel.

The Olympic Games 2012, the BBC World Service & Twitter

Marie Gillespie, Rob Procter, Billur Aslan, James Dennis, Nour Schreim & Marzieh Targhi

This session will examine how international news organisations like the BBC World Service (WS) are adapting to social media and integrating it into their journalistic practices. In particular, it evaluates the Twitter strategy adopted by the WS during the London Olympic Games. It does so comparatively through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a carefully selected sample of approximately 10,000 tweets harvested from the BBC’s Arabic, English, Persian and Russian Services. Our particular concern was to get at the nature of ‘the global conversation’ - who is reacting to who in what way, and in particular how people are reacting to the BBC coverage and its social media output.

The project set out to address the following questions: what impact did the WS Twitter strategy have during the Olympic period on reach and/or engagement? Did it generate more followers? Did it allow for greater exposure to WS content? Did increased transparency among broadcasters and audiences attract new followers and audiences? Did its twitter strategy make it easier for overseas audiences to follow and understand the Olympics? To what extent did the BBC’s language services become a hub/centre for discussions of Olympics in Arabic, English, Persian and Russian? Do WS Tweeters exert influence in the Twitter sphere? Do WS tweeters create greater engagement? The panel will examine issues of methodology (our methodology included a coding frame that allowed us to trace gender, national and religious dynamics), as well as the wider implications of social media, like Twitter, for issues of democratising media participation.

Call for Papers: ESRC South East DTC Annual Conference: Power Revisited: Crisis and Opportunities

Call for Papers: ESRC South East DTC Annual Conference: Power Revisited: Crisis and Opportunities

Department of Politics and International Relations

Royal Holloway, University of London

Wednesday 20th March 2013

Arab Spring! Occupy! Euro-crisis! Austerity! Riots! New Warfare! Is this the rise of power in a new guise? Is this a time of crisis or opportunity? Recent events challenge us to reconsider the nature of power in our contemporary world. The view of power today is split. It could be said that our current situation is merely a repeat of history, and an intensification of the old battle lines. Conversely our current situation can be regarded as new, unique and pressing. How we come to understand power has a bearing on how we come to understand our future. As such, this conference aims to stimulate critical engagement and challenge our predisposed notions of power. We invite paper proposals on any topics related to the conference theme, and would particularly welcome abstracts related to the following areas:
  • Conflict Analysis
  • International Political Economy
  • Military, Security and Strategic Studies
  • Political Communication
  • Political Culture and Identity
  • Political Protest and Social Transformation
  • Political Theory
  • Transnational and Global Relations
Deadline for Abstracts: Wednesday 19th December 2012
 
Submission guidelines for abstracts:

Abstracts should be between 300-350 words in a PDF or Word format and
offer a concise outline of the proposed paper.
Submissions must contain the following information:
1. Name and contact email.
2. Institutional affiliation.
3. Short biographical statement of 75 words or fewer.
4. Title of paper.
5. Abstract of between 300-350 words.
6. Keywords.
Please send abstracts on proposed papers to the conference convenors at DTCConference2013@gmail.com
Papers are required and should be 3000-5000 words in length.
Presentations will be 15 minutes.

Schedule:

Deadline for abstracts: Wednesday 19th December 2012

Notification for authors: January 2013

Deadline for papers for successful applicants: Wednesday 6th March 2013

For more information please visit http://dtcrhulpir.tumblr.com or contact the conference convenors DTCConference2013@gmail.com

 

ESRC SEDTC Politics Postgraduate Conference - Call for Papers

Ben O'Loughlin to present at Australia National University, 25 October 2012

Ben O'Loughlin is giving a presentation this Thursday 25 October in the Department of International Relations at Australia National University. His paper is entitled, Strategic Narratives and Power Transition: Communicating a New Order. The paper is based on a forthcoming book on Strategic Narratives with Alister Miskimmon and Laura Roselle. Details of the seminar are below. Thanks to Sarah Logan and Matthew Davies for organising the event.

Strategic Narratives and Power Transition: Communicating a New Order

Professor Ben O'Loughlin

05:00pm - 06:30pm
25 October 2012
Seminar Room 3, Hedley Bull Centre (130), Garran Road, ANU

Abstract

This presentation explains how strategic narratives play a vital role in defining international order and power transition. The analysis of power transition has been dominated by studies focusing on material conditions (Gilpin 1981; Organski 1958), changes in balance of power (Waltz 1979; Kennedy 1988) and more recently the evolution of a liberal order (Ikenberry 2011). Today, a changing distribution of material power will be reflected in greater challenges for great powers to project strategic narratives about the future of the international system, signs of which we are already witnessing. Power transition now occurs in the conditions of a global media ecology in which states must narrate to multiple audiences; this more transparent order affects how states achieve legitimacy for their narrative. A strategic narrative framework can help analysts account for the social, ideational and relational dimensions of power transition neglected in traditional theories. Analysis of the formation, projection and domestic and international reception of China's strategic narrative shows that while China might become a superpower in material terms, its ability to gain legitimacy for an alternative vision of world order is constrained. Its narrative must work against a range of prior understandings of China and of the international system itself. The current rise of the BRICs is a fascinating period for those concerned with how the future of international order will play out because each rising power has an ambiguous relationship to the existing order as well as different concepts and values underpinning its narrative of future order. Given that previous power transitions have often led to systemic violence, it remains to be seen whether any existing or rising powers can craft a strategic narrative that other powers can align with their own.

ESRC PhD Funding in Politics at Royal Holloway

As part of the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) we are pleased to welcome scholarship applications from well-qualified applicants. The ESRC DTC is in partnership with the universities of Kent, Reading and Surrey. Further details of the ESRC DTC South East can be found here. The ESRC DTC has a total of 24 fully funded PhD scholarships available.

The deadline for applications for ESRC funding is 4pm Friday February 22nd 2013. In order to apply for ESRC funding you must be eligible for an award and be accepted on to the PhD programme in the Department of Politics and International Relations. The New Political Communication Unit is a research centre of the Department.

Full details on ESRC PhD funding can be found here.

Applications and Admissions

Applications from students who wish to be considered for ESRC funding should be made directly to the Department of Politics and International Relations. The Department welcomes applications from highly qualified and motivated candidates. The application process for our postgraduate research programmes is an interactive one. We place great emphasis on matching prospective students to supervisors’ interests, building on our existing research activities. We are particularly keen to encourage applications in areas related to our four research units - Centre for European Politics; the New Political Communication Unit; the Centre for Global and Transnational Studies and the Political Theory Reading Group.

Interested potential applicants should first refer to our website to obtain a good idea of the department's research foci: click here. The Department is only able to consider applications in research areas of interest to its full-time academic staff. The research agenda of the New Political Communication Unit can be found by browsing its website here.

In the first instance, potential applicants should prepare a research proposal, outlining the project that they will undertake if accepted onto the PhD programme.  This should be at least 8-10 pages long and should include the key research questions, proposed methods and a bibliography. Email this research proposal, along with a cv, to the Director of Graduate Study, Dr Alister Miskimmon (until 14/12/12) or Dr Evelyn Goh who will take over as Director of Graduate Study on 1st January 2013.

If the proposal is met with interest by a potential supervisor, the Director of Graduate Study will invite the potential applicant to discuss their proposal further via email. UK-based applicants may be invited to visit the Department. Promising potential applicants will then be advised to apply formally for a place on our PhD programme. Candidates shortlisted for the PhD programme will be interviewed.

Potential applicants may contact the Director of Graduate Study with proposals at any stage of the academic year. We will also have a range of Royal Holloway scholarships which will be awarded on a competitive basis to well-qualified candidates.

New NPCU book on public diplomacy in Spanish

 

We are delighed to announce that María Luisa Azpíroz has published her PhD research as a new book, Diplomacia pública: El caso de la 'guerra contra el terror', with Editorial UOC.

MªLuisa was a visiting PhD researcher at the New Political Communication Unit supervised by Ben O'Loughlin, and based at Facultad de Comunicación, University of Navarra, Spain. Her supervisor there was Professor María Teresa La Porte Fernández-Alfaro. 

We wish MªLuisa the best of luck with her future career. 

Six days til the deadline: Call for Papers - MWC 5th anniversary conference

Call for papers

Media, War & Conflict Fifth Anniversary Conference

11-12 April 2013

Royal Holloway, University of London

250 word abstracts to Lisa.Dacunha@rhul.ac.uk by 10 October 2012

Media, War & Conflict’s fifth anniversary conference will be held on 11-12 April 2013 at Royal Holloway, University of London. The conference is open to scholars, journalists, military practitioners and activists from around the world.

Keynote speakers:

  • Jamie Shea, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges
  • Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, University of Pennsylvania
  • Cees Hamelink, Emeritus Professor of International Communication at the University of Amsterdam and Emeritus Professor for Media, Religion and Culture at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

The journal was first published in April 2008, bringing together international scholars and journalists from the fields of political science, history, and communication, and military, NGO and journalist practitioners. The aim was to map the shifting arena of war, conflict and terrorism in an increasingly mediated age, and to explore cultural, political and technological transformations in media-military relations, journalistic practices and digital media, and their impact on policy, publics, and outcomes of warfare. The fifth anniversary conference offers the chance to showcase the best research in this field while also taking stock of how the field has developed and identifying the emerging challenges we face.

We invite papers on a range of topics, including:

  • Contemporary and historical war reporting
  • Changing forms of credibility, legitimacy and authority
  • Media ethics in the coverage of conflict
  • The role of citizen-users and social media in conflict
  • Terrorism, media and publics
  • Intelligence operations and media
  • Digital and cyber warfare
  • Media and conflict prevention, peacekeeping and post-conflict scenarios
  • Photo and video journalism in wartime
  • War and conflict in popular culture
  • The power of the visual and other modalities
  • Commemoration and memorialisation of war and conflict

The deadline for abstracts is 10 October 2012. Please submit 250-word abstracts and author-affiliation details to Lisa.Dacunha@rhul.ac.uk.

Billur Aslan to present at EU-Middle East Forum, Cairo

Tahrir Square, 22 November 2011Billur Aslan will present a paper at the DGAP 17th New Faces Conference on "Pluralism in Egypt and Tunisia – How the Political Opening is Changing Islamist Forces" on 4–7 October 2012 in Cairo. Billur's talk is entitled, 'Connective Power of Islamist Parties: How does the Internet shape the activities of Islamists in Egypt?' 

The conference is organised by the German Council on Foreign Relations and the American University in Cairo. Speakers include Khaled Hamza, Chief Editor of the Muslim Brotherhood’s main website, ikhwanweb.com, and Gudrun Krämer, Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies and Director of the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies at Freie Universität Berlin.

NPCU at ISA 2013: A growing force

On their way to the ISQ wine reception.We are delighted that a number of NPCU researchers will be presenting at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention in San Francisco in April 2013. 

Billur Aslan will present papers entitled, The Diffusion of Revolutionary Movements via the Internet: Post Election Protests in Russia and The Power of The Internet in the Rising Protests: The Case of the Iranian Green Movement. James Dennis's paper is entitled, Diffusion of Information on Social-Networking Sites within a Participatory Continuum: A Critique of the Utopian / Dystopian Divide 2.0 and Slacktivism. Meanwhile, following our successful Olympics and the -isms conference this summer, Mark Pope will talk about The Olympic Games, cosmopolitanism, and UK news media discourse on human rights issues: consequences for public diplomacy. Finally, Ben O'Loughlin will present a paper, A non-representational history of diplomacy and communication.

(ISA login may be required to access abstracts).