big data international relations thesis

Last updated 2nd August 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. As we resolve the issues resulting from this, we are also experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings .

Login Alert

• > Journals
• > Ethics & International Affairs
• > Volume 29 Issue 4
• > Big Data and International Relations

Article contents

Big data and international relations.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

From November 26 to 29, 2008, ten heavily armed members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Kashmiri separatist group, attacked several public sites in Mumbai, India, with automatic weapons and grenades, killing 164 people and wounding three hundred. This was one of the first known instances of terrorists employing powerful search algorithms such as Twitter's or the link analysis used in Google's PageRank system, which allowed LeT members to access information from massive data pools in real-time. During the attacks, an LeT operations center based in Pakistan communicated with the terrorists via sattelite and GSM phones to provide them with open-source intelligence. From the operations center, LeT members data mined the Internet and social media, tapping into the power of Big Data to provide the attackers with an intelligence advantage over Indian law enforcement agencies. The attackers were thereby kept up to date on the status of the Indian government's response and even received personal profiles of the hostages they took in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

Access options

1 Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It , ebook (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2015), ch. 6.

2 Dunlap , Charles J. Jr. , “ The Hyper-Personalization of War: Cyber, Big Data, and the Changing Face of Conflict ,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 15 , International Engagement on Cyber IV ( 2014 ), pp. 108 – 118 Google Scholar .

3 Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, The Human Face of Big Data (Sausalito, Calif.: Against All Odds Productions, 2012); Kitchin , Rob , “ Big Data and Human Geography: Opportunities, Challenges and Risks ,” Dialogues in Human Geography 3 , no. 3 ( 2013 ), pp. 262 –67 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity, and Variety” (Meta Group, February 6, 2001), blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf ; and Bill Vorhies, “How Many ‘V's in Big Data—The Characteristics That Define Big Data,” Business Foundation Series #2, October 31, 2013, data-magnum.com/how-many-vs-in-big-data-the-characteristics-that-define-big-data/ .

5 Small chips attached to objects that contain electronically stored and wirelessly transferred information, e.g., for tracking and identifying parcels (functionally similar to QR codes).

6 Richard Winter, “Big Data: Business Opportunities, Requirements, and Oracle's Approach,” Executive Report, Winter Corporation, December 2011, p. 2, www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/infrastructure/winter-big-data-1438533.pdf .

7 Zwitter , Andrej , “ Big Data Ethics ,” Big Data & Society 1 , no. 2 ( 2014 ), p. 2 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), p. 52ff.

8 Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, Big Data , pp. 26–31.

9 Zwitter, “Big Data Ethics,” p. 2.

10 Kitchin , Rob , “ Big Data, New Epistemologies and Paradigm Shifts ,” Big Data & Society 1 , no. 1 ( 2014 ), p. 2 CrossRef Google Scholar .

11 Ray Wang, “Monday's Musings: Beyond The Three V's of Big Data—Viscosity and Virality,” Forbes , February 27, 2012.

12 Weng , Lilian , Menczer , Filippo , and Ahn , Yong-Yeol , “ Virality Prediction and Community Structure in Social Networks ,” Scientific Reports 3 , Article number: 2522 (published online August 28, 2013 ) CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed .

13 Jacob Silverman, “Time to Regulate Data Brokers,” Al Jazeera America , “Opinion” section, January 23, 2014, america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/1/time-to-regulatedatabrokers.html .

14 Goodman, Future Crimes , ch. 4.

15 Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

16 Chris Anderson, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete,” WIRED , June 23, 2008, archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory/ .

17 F. Johansson et al., “Detecting Emergent Conflicts through Web Mining and Visualization,” Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (EISIC), 2011 European, pp. 346–53.

18 Lazer , David et al. , “ The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis ,” Science 343 , no. 6176 ( 2014 ), pp. 1203 –205 CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed .

19 “Ushahidi,” www.ushahidi.com/ , accessed April 16, 2015; and “Kenyan Elections 2013, Community Wiki—Ushahidi,” wiki.ushahidi.com/display/WIKI/Uchaguzi+-+Kenyan+Elections+2013 , accessed April 16, 2015.

20 Center for Social Media, “2014 Social Media Survey Results,” Annual Survey (Alexandria, Va.: International Association of Chiefs of Police, Fall 2014), www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/Publications/2014SurveyResults.aspx .

21 UN Secretary-General, “Information and Communications Technology in the United Nations,” Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly, October 10, 2014, UN document A/69/517, para. 40.

22 John Karlsrud, “Peacekeeping 4.0: Harnessing the Potential of Big Data, Social Media, and Cyber Technologies,” in Jan-Frederik Kremer and Benedikt Müller, eds., Cyberspace and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges , 2014 edition (Heidelberg, Ger.: Springer, 2013), pp. 141–60.

23 Satellite Sentinel Project, “Evidence of Burial of Human Remains in Kadugli, South Kordofan,” Special Report, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, August 24, 2011, hhi.harvard.edu/publications/special-report-evidence-burial-human-remains-kadugli-south-kordofan .

24 Sheldon Himelfarb, “Can Big Data Stop Wars Before They Happen?” Foreign Policy , April 25, 2014, foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/25/can-big-data-stop-wars-before-they-happen/ .

25 Rasool Dawar ( Associated Press ), “Taliban Threatens Foreign Aid Workers,” Washingtion Times online, August 26, 2010, www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/26/taliban-threatens-foreign-aid-workers/ .

26 Marc Parry, “Academics Join Relief Efforts Around the World as Crisis Mappers,” Chronicle of Higher Education , March 27, 2011, chronicle.com/article/Academics-Join-Relief-Efforts/126912/ .

27 Mireille Hildebrandt, Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law: Novel Entanglements of Law and Technology (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Pub, 2015), p. 90.

28 John J. Reilly Center of the University of Notre Dame, “Predictive Policing,” reilly.nd.edu/outreach/emerging-ethical-dilemmas-and-policy-issues-in-science-and-technology-2014/predictive-policing/ .

29 I.e., a website that cannot be indexed by search engines and to which one only has access through identity-cloaking protocols such as Tor .

30 “Europe-v-Facebook.org,” www.europe-v-facebook.org , accessed August 28, 2015.

31 Reuters , “Google Accused of ‘Passive-Aggressiveness’ over EU Right to Be Forgotten,” Telegraph , “Technology” section, November 5, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/11210836/Google-accused-of-passive-aggressiveness-over-EU-right-to-be-forgotten.html .

32 “Global Data Protection Handbook,” dlapiperdataprotection.com/#handbook/world-map-section/c1_AR/c2_EG , accessed April 16, 2015.

33 Jan-Frederik Kremer and Benedikt Müller, eds., Cyberspace and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges , 2014 edition (Heidelberg, Ger.: Springer, 2013), p. vii.

This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref .

• Google Scholar

View all Google Scholar citations for this article.

Save article to Kindle

To save this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle .

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

• Volume 29, Issue 4
• Andrej Zwitter
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679415000362

Save article to Dropbox

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox .

Save article to Google Drive

To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive .

Reply to: Submit a response

- No HTML tags allowed - Web page URLs will display as text only - Lines and paragraphs break automatically - Attachments, images or tables are not permitted

Your details

Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly.

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests.

Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners.

IEEE Account

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.

Big Data and International Relations

• December 2015
• Ethics & International Affairs 29(04):377-389
• 29(04):377-389

• University of Groningen

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Çağdaş Cengiz
• Ibrahim Abdulla Mohammad Aldallal Alkhazraji
• Mohd Yamani bin Yahya
• Ethics Inform Tech
• Daniel Feitosa
• Yulia Virantina
• Miftahul Huda

• Grammateia Kotsialou

• Tshilidzi Marwala

• Lilian Weng

• Ryan Kennedy

• Alessandro Vespignani
• John J Reilly
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Cyberspace and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Publication

• Conflict and Fragility
• Coronacrisis
• Tomorrow’s Worlds
• Diplomacy & Foreign Affairs
• European Union
• Sustainability & Economy
• Geopolitics & Global Order
• Security & Defence
• Internationale Spectator 2000-2014
• Netherlands
• Sub Saharan Africa
• Middle East & North Africa
• Russia & Central Asia
• Arctic & Pacific
• Books & Movies

The impact of Big Data of International Affairs

Big Data is changing our lives, but does it also change international politics? Andrej Zwitter, active at the University of Groningen as professor by special appointment of NGIZ, argues that Big Data is influencing international politics on ways we only recently started to notice. To measure the impact Zwitter explores new possibilities and risks in the areas of humanitarian aid, development and international security. 

On November 26, 2008, ten heavily armed men of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) attacked Mumbai in what became one of the worst cases of terrorism supported by public and social media informed intelligence. With a press of a button the Pakistan-based operations center, which kept in touch with the armed attackers via GSM and satellite phones, were able to identify the most important targets, the status of the Indian government’s response, and even personal profiles of hostages they kept in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, based on openly accessible information gathered from the internet (open source intelligence, OSINT).

In one instance, a bystander tweeted a photo of police officers advancing onto the besieged Jewish community building, which was promptly intercepted by the operations center and used to alert the attackers, which used this information to ambush the police officers. [1]

Big Data is the key This is just one of many examples illustrating the threats that have accompanied the positive sides of modern technology and the omnipresence of the internet. The key concept for understanding this and other similar scenarios is Big Data. While many have heard about the term, only a few have a concrete idea what Big Data actually entails and even fewer have thought about the implications of Big Data regarding international affairs. This article develops the idea that Big Data increasingly affects politics in manifold ways. In part, international politics have already experienced such change with the ascend of cyber space as important domain of daily activity. With Big Data this change is not only accelerating, but it unveils new dimensions, which we, as political scientists and observers of international affairs, are only now learning to comprehend.

As political scientists and observers of international affairs we are only now learning to comprehend

What is Big Data? The novelty of Big Data requires us to take a look at its definitions. Apart from being big amounts of data there are more features relevant to the understanding of this relatively young phenomenon. Looking at different definitions and descriptions one can distill its most important features.

The classics are the three Vs:

·         Volume : consisting of massive amounts (measured today in petabytes [10 15 bytes], exabytes [10 18 bytes] and zetabytes [10 21 bytes] and soon to be measured in yottabytes [10 24 ] = 250 trillion Dvds); according to Smolan and Erwitt, from the beginning of History till 2011 5 billion gigabytes were produced – in 2015 this amount is produced every 10 seconds. [2]

·         Velocity : the speed of data creation and its collection approaches real-time. [3] This not only concerns questions of bandwidth but also of implementing IT architectural solutions that can cope with the data (e.g. Hadoop, an open-source software for distributed computing of massive data sets). [4]

·         Variety : encompassing structured and unstructured data, different formats and units of analysis, such as documents, emails, social media messages, YouTube videos, pictures, audio, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, satellite imagery, sky cartography, DNA sequencing, phone network call data, cell phone GPS signals etc. Furthermore, it includes data from different sources, self-generated, data scraped from the web, or retrieved from other outside sources. [5]

Big Data, with all its problems and shortcomings, promises an information advantage, be it in business intelligence, state intelligence or any other form of data gathering and analysis. The promises are to become, if not omnipotent, at least omniscient – a promise no business or government is not at least tempted by and one that criminals are readily tapping into.

At the same time, new forms of data analytics (particularly those that build on machine generated algorithms and replace causation with correlation) raised questions about whether we are encountering a new epistemic era of radical empiricism in which theories will have been a thing of the past. [6]

Big Data and International Relations Theory With Big Data, most certainly, the human being as individual actor in world affairs, has shifted into the focus of research and theorization. Thinking about individual agency in ethics as well as in international relations theory builds on at least three elements of attribution: [7]

1.      Causality: If the result is causally connected to an agent’s action, then one can attribute this act to the actor.

2.      Knowledge: If an agent has knowledge of the consequences of its actions, intentionality can be attributed.

3.      Choice: If the agent had no choice to act differently without more harm for itself or for others, no grounds of justification or excuse can be brought forth.

This form of agency attribution associated with individuals implies individual causality. In much of the international relations (IR) literature, individual relevance for causal attribution has been downplayed (because of the quite evident need to simplify theory and reduce actors for the sake of simplifying the analysis of reality).

For example, realism considers non-state actors as mere proxies to states when it comes to international affairs; and liberalism might accept the host of corporate actors inhabiting the cyber domain (also called the fifth domain of warfare), but has a difficulty handling individual actors and single-issue groups of opportunity like Anonymous.

However, the role of social media in the Arab Spring, [8] Snowden’s leaking of NSA files, or the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by terror organizations, [9] raises the question about whether the role of Big Data might require a rethinking of the individual’s role in IR.

Anonymous against ISIS The interaction between individuals, for example hacker conglomerates such as Anonymous and LulzSec or even more loosely associated single purpose groups that helped spread word about the Arab Uprisings through Facebook and Twitter, illustrate a changing power relationship in international affairs. Increasingly we find that states’ powers in the fifth domain of cyber are matched by operating capabilities of loosely affiliated groups operating in an inherently decentralized way.

One example is the declaration of war by the hacker group Anonymous against ISIS by in the beginning of 2015. Operation ISIS (#OpISIS) targets mostly the online presence (websites, Facebook and Twitter accounts) of ISIS affiliates. At one instance the media reported that hackers associated with the Anonymous group had taken down several thousand ISIS related Twitter accounts. This happened not necessarily to the appreciation of state intelligence agencies, which got most of their intelligence about ISIS from information gathered from these sources. [10]

While the individual alone might still be relatively powerless, these small ad hoc groups give us already an entirely different view on distributed agency, i.e. an agency that is for its capability of morally relevant action dependent on other actors (if only a few). One could call this agency, which is for its capability to act dependent on other actors, a dependent agency. Floridi refers to these moral enablers, which hinder or facilitate moral action, as infraethics. [11]

Big Data has induced a hyper-networked world society, in which it is easier than ever before to engage in common political causes irrespective of national boundaries

The network nature of society, however, means that this dependent agency is always a factor when judging the moral responsibility of the agent. Big Data has induced a hyper-networked world society, in which it is easier than ever before to engage in common political causes irrespective of national boundaries. This changes foundational assumptions about ethical responsibility in international relations theory by changing the nature of power of actors in the fifth domain: namely an inherent shift towards informational/soft power.

This changing set of actors is, as also below examples of crisis mappers etc. illustrate, tied into the shifting nature of power from the physical to the informational.

Big Data for Peace and Justice The ethical dimension becomes particularly evident when taking a closer look at the use of Big Data in the areas of peace, security and aid. Humanitarian and development aid are dependent on reliable data for operational planning, logistics and monitoring of their projects. In order to facilitate this, several platforms have been developed to provide humanitarian aid workers with open access to information (and many more are mushrooming every year).

This sharing of data is a prerequisite to facilitate aid delivered by NGOs that otherwise do not have readily access to the latest information or have the capability of gathering intelligence on the ground themselves.

For example, when disaster strikes humanitarian operational planning based on a rapid needs assessment (RNA) should usually be ready 72 hours after the beginning of the disaster. In this regard, quite a few innovations have tried improving the information gap that many organizations have been facing.

Crisis mappers Ushahidi was developed as a platform that offered the ability to upload information about crises from a GPS enabled cellphone in real-time onto a map accessible for everyone. [12] It was extensively used to support humanitarian operations after the Haiti earthquake in 2010, but also served to improve the election monitoring in Kenya 2013 (Uchaguzi project), among many other examples. [13]

Similarly, the Standby Task Force, Sahanna and other crisis mappers use overlay technology to project crowd-sourced information provided often by volunteers onto maps to inform humanitarian and development aid workers.

The Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN), an umbrella group of 16 volunteer technology organizations brings together expertise in geographical information systems, online mapping, data analysis and statistics in order to develop user-friendly tools for volunteers to contribute to relief efforts through the crowd-sourced mapping of man-made and natural disasters. [14]

Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) is a project launched by OCHA containing more than 1500 datasets ranging from databases aggregating the number of Ebola cases and infected aid workers, water sources and opinions about water quality in Kenya, to a database of total uniformed personnel contributions of each contributing country by month, by type (troop, police, or expert/observer) and by mission.

Data for Development Challenge Furthermore, in 2012 the global telecommunications company Orange launched its first and in 2014 its second "Data for Development Challenge" (D4D). For the purpose of the challenge, in which academic and development organizations compete over the best applications for mobile data, Orange provides the teams with datasets containing: [15]

-          communications between antenna tower;

-          a sample of movement routes: location by mast;

-          a sample of movement routes: location by administrative unit;

-          a synthetic data set; and

-          weather data.

Participants in the first D4D challenge showed for example that human movement is surprisingly predictable and useful for forecasting the spread of diseases. Another project used the telecommunications data to provide insights about the geography of social ties and social divisions. [16]

Potential for misuse While these developments promise great insights into the nature of epidemics, help improve the delivery of aid and strengthen the resilience of local communities against sudden onset and protracted crises, Big Data in this area bears a huge potential for misuse.

It suffices looking at the amount of aid works that become victims of armed attacks. In 2013 alone, there were 251 separate attacks against civilian aid operations, affecting 460 aid workers. Of these, 155 aid workers were killed, 171 were seriously wounded, and 134 were kidnapped. [17]

Aid workers, particularly since the shift from in-kind to cash-based aid, are travelling with much money, hardly any security (many aid organizations consider military escorts a violation of the humanitarian principles) and with expensive equipment (such as Toyota Land Cruisers, the standard vehicle of humanitarian aid workers).

If humanitarian actors have access to these crowd-sourced tools for their operational planning, so do criminals and armed actors ready to profit from the caravans of goods ready for the taking. Furthermore, location tracking of internally displaced persons (IDPs) might be just as useful for humanitarian aid workers as it is for the armed factions from which the IDPs are trying to escape.

Open Data The potential for misuse and the criminal innovation that Big Data in the area of development and humanitarian aid might experience is limited only by the imagination of malevolent actors. The biggest risk, here stems from what is termed Open Data , i.e. databases and open source information accessible to everyone. [18]

Examples of misuse of open crowd-sourced data are manifold, as Raymond, Howarth and Hutson describe, such as the Taliban attacks on Word Food Program distribution points and clinics of Médecins Sans Frontières responding to the 2010 Pakistan floods and food crisis, facilitated by location data provided by crisis mappers. [19]

Data might in the near future indeed not only be a source for the improvement of aid, but the very thing that will also lead to the a digital humanitarian crisis

Open Data, consisting of new media (text, photo, and video content generated by individuals through social media applications), crisis mapping based on crowd-sourcing, and other forms of Big Data (e.g. the internet of things, IoT), might in the near future indeed not only be a source for the improvement of aid, but the very thing that will also lead to the a digital humanitarian crisis.

National and international security With regards to national and international security, Big Data also already plays an important role. On the domestic and international level the massive use social media has become common practice. For example 95% of the police forces are actively using social media for reaching out to the public, for investigative and intelligence gathering purposes etc. [20]

One of the recent advance of Big Data happened in the area of predictive policing for forecasting crime hotspots to spatiotemporal analyses to risk terrain analyses. [21] Also the US military has accepted cyber as another (the fifth) domain of war, after land, sea, air and space. [22]

Automated bots This domain of warfare has very readily been occupied by state and non-state actors and the forms of warfare include Distributed Denial of Server Attacks (DDoS) for taking down websites and servers, viruses for targeting of critical infrastructure (e.g. StuxNet), attacks on individual’s online presence (e.g. identity theft), massive online campaigning, manipulation of mass audiences (social engineering), and recruiting of terrorists through social media.

Thereby the agents are by no means solely human. A 2013 report conducting a detailed analysis of web-traffic found that a staggering 61,5% of website visitors were automated bots (with an increasing tendency), half of which consists of “good bots”, necessary for search engines and other services, the other half of malicious bot types such as scrapers (5%), hacking tools (4,5%), spammers (0.5%) and with an amount of 20,5% impersonators for the purpose of market and state intelligence and manipulation. [23]

Twitter bombs The following two examples might serve to illustrate the capability and the actual cyberwar operations that are currently going on. Early 2015, the Intercept released leaked information that the British intelligence agency GCHQ had launched “Operation QUITO” in 2009, an operation design to use social media and other tools in the cyber domain to ensure the continuation of Britain’s rule over the Falklands.

At the heart of the operation was the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG), whose task was to develop surveillance (online Human Intelligence – HUMINT) and effects operations “preventing Argentina from taking over the Falkland Islands by conducting online HUMINT”. [24] JTRIG would be using tools and techniques that would allow mass delivery of emails and SMS as well as audio messages to telephones, the masquerading of Facebook pages for individuals and even whole countries, to artificially increase traffic to a website or its page views, to change the outcomes of online polls, and inflate the view count on media websites such as Youtube, to name but a few tools. [25]

A similar strategy was used back in 2010 when hackers planted so called Twitter-bombs to manipulate the election over the senate seat of Ted Kennedy in favor of the republican candidate. The Twitter-bomb – the practice is called Astroturfing – created fake Twitter accounts that would automatically post derogatory messages about the democratic candidate, thereby creating the appearance of a legitimate grassroots debate. [26]

The UN Secretary General detailed in a report how the use of technology has shifted from being a mere utility to becoming an intrinsic part of decision-making

There are, however, also positive aspects relating to peace and security concerning Big Data. Also the United Nations, next to NGOs, is increasingly getting involved in the use of data for improving humanitarian action, as has been shown already above.

In October 2014, the UN Secretary General detailed in a report to the General Assembly how the use of technology (Big Data, social media and other tools) has shifted from being a mere utility to becoming an intrinsic part of decision-making, information gathering and a planning tool in support of the United Nations’ core mandates in the areas of peace and security, development, human rights and international law.

“ Networks of organizations and individual volunteers use online platforms for collaborative data gathering, processing and publishing to help support relief efforts. Various technologies and methods range from relatively simple data gathering, to highly sophisticated sensor technology and analytics. The increasing availability of free and open-source software and open data reinforce the need for the United Nations to collaborate in the movement of big data, joined with humanitarian and social networking.” [27]

For that purpose, he laid out a strategy to strengthen, and provide a common vision for, the delivery of information and communications technology in the United Nations focusing on improving the internal ICT capabilities and increasingly investing in Big Data innovations. [28]

Peacekeeping and peacebuilding Researchers already envision the role that Big Data can play for the purpose of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. [29] John Karlsrud in his very insightful chapter, for example, argues that the already ongoing cyberization of conflict prevention, humanitarian action and development with initiatives such as Ushahidi, Syria Tracker, the possibility of tracking population flows regarding internal displacement, etc. should finally lead to a new generation of peacekeeping (peacekeeping 4.0) and peacebuilding that embraces the advancements in real-time awareness, feedback and early warning that Big Data has to offer.

After all “[b]eing able to access, analyze, and use big data should be imperative for peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations, which by definition find themselves operating in volatile situations.” [30]

International justice Also in the area of international justice Big Data has become an important source of information. Satellite imagery is increasingly becoming another source Big Data analytics. Location data correlated with surveys, photos and maps can answer a variety of questions in the area of financial services, retail, policing, and even international justice as in the uncovering of war crimes. [31]

For example, in 2011, the Satellite Sentinel Programme of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative reported to have found eight mass graves in and around Kadugli (Sudan) with the help of analyzed DigitalGlobe imagery corroborated with details retrieved from UN reports and eyewitness accounts. [32]

Prediction and forecasting Big Data also comes into play concerning the prediction and forecasting of conflicts and social instabilities. For example, the US Defense Department’s Information Volume and Velocity program aims to harness strategic intelligence from Big Data by use pattern recognition to detect social instabilities in populations that would point to emerging conflicts. [33]

The UN initiated the Global Pulse, a Big Data based project to track real-time developments regarding human wellbeing and growing vulnerabilities. “The initiative was established based on a recognition that digital data offers the opportunity to gain a better understanding of changes in human well-being, and to get real-time feedback on how well policy responses are working.” [34]

This has led some commentators to cautiously hoping that Big Data might in future be able to prevent conflicts before they happen. [35]

Conclusion Kremer and Müller have argued that “the global cyberspace substrate has undermined the older distinctions between international and domestic, between peace and war, between state and non-state actors, and between technology, politics, and economics.” [36]

One probably has to develop their conclusions even further to argue that the fifth domain threatens to radically reshape our understanding of international relations and ethics. This will consequently have to lead to a rethinking and reformulating of theories of international relations, ethical attribution, and just war theory.

Among the many challenges that arise with Big Data, governance efforts should strive to reduce that sensitive information (among many more issues for example the location of humanitarian actors and IDPs) does not become Open Data, which is accessible to and exploitable by malevolent actors.

Global awareness Most importantly, however, one task is left to states, international organizations and the civil society. In order to reduce the vulnerabilities that Big Data has imposed on society, knowledgeable stakeholders need to raise the awareness of people about the intricacies that Big Data and their digital footprint bring with them.

Big Data certainly holds the promise for improving global well-being and even preventing conflicts. Nevertheless, it can also be the source of much evil. The only way to keep the misuse of Big Data in check is to create a global awareness and to use the tools Big Data itself offers, social media and global connectedness, to enable society to become the public watchdog of the Big Data age.

Prof. Dr. Andrej Zwitter is NGIZ Chair for International Relations at the Department of Legal Theory, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and honorary senior research fellow at Liverpool Hope University as well as senior research fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip). This article was produced as part of the cooperation between the Austrian Institute for International Affairs and the Danube University Krems, Austria.

[1] Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It , ebook (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2015), chap. 6.

[2] Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, The Human Face of Big Data (Sausalito, Calif.: Against All Odds Productions, 2012).

[3] Rob Kitchin, “Big Data and Human Geography Opportunities, Challenges and Risks,” Dialogues in Human Geography 3, no. 3 (November 1, 2013): 262–67, doi:10.1177/2043820613513388.

[4] Doug Laney, 3D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity, and Variety (Meta Group, February 6, 2001), http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.

[5] Bill Vorhies, “How Many ‘V’s in Big Data – The Characteristics That Define Big Data,” Business Foundation Series, #2 , October 31, 2013, http://data-magnum.com/how-many-vs-in-big-data-the-characteristics-that-define-big-data/.

[6] Rob Kitchin, “Big Data, New Epistemologies and Paradigm Shifts,” Big Data & Society 1, no. 1 (April 1, 2014): 2053951714528481, doi:10.1177/2053951714528481.

[7] Merel Noorman, “Computing and Moral Responsibility,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2012, 2012, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/computing-responsibility/; Andrej Zwitter, “Big Data Ethics,” Big Data & Society 1, no. 2 (July 1, 2014): 2053951714559253, doi:10.1177/2053951714559253.

[8] Regarding the role of social media during and the Arab Spring compare: Gadi Wolfsfeld, Elad Segev, and Tamir Sheafer, “Social Media and the Arab Spring Politics Comes First,” The International Journal of Press/Politics 18, no. 2 (April 1, 2013): 115–37, doi:10.1177/1940161212471716; Habibul Haque Khondker, “Role of the New Media in the Arab Spring,” Globalizations 8, no. 5 (October 1, 2011): 675–79, doi:10.1080/14747731.2011.621287.

[9] Gabriel Weimann, “Terror on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 16, no. 2 (2010): 45–54.

[10] Jasper Hamill, “Why Are Spooks ‘Furious’ with Anonymous Drive to Name and Shame ISIS Members?,” News, Mirror , (March 18, 2015), http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/spooks-left-furious-after-anonymous-5355738.

[11] Luciano Floridi, “Distributed Morality in an Information Society,” Science and Engineering Ethics 19, no. 3 (2013): 727–43.

[12] “Ushahidi,” accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.ushahidi.com/.

[13] “Uchaguzi - Kenyan Elections 2013 - Community Wiki - Ushahidi,” accessed April 16, 2015, https://wiki.ushahidi.com/display/WIKI/Uchaguzi+-+Kenyan+Elections+2013.

[14] Declan Butler, “Crowdsourcing Goes Mainstream in Typhoon Response,” Nature , November 20, 2013, doi:10.1038/nature.2013.14186.

[15] “The Second ‘Data for Development’ (D4D) Challenge in Africa | United Nations Global Pulse,” accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.unglobalpulse.org/D4D-Challenge-Senegal.

[16] Jennifer Poole, “Winning Research from the Data 4 Development Challenge | United Nations Global Pulse,” Global Pulse, (May 6, 2013), http://unglobalpulse.org/D4D-Winning-Research.

[17] Aid Worker Security Report 2014 - Unsafe Passage: Road Attacks and Their Impact on Humanitarian Operations , Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) (Humanitarian Outcomes, 2014), https://aidworkersecurity.org.

[18] UN Secretary General, Information and Communications Technology in the United Nations , Report of the Secretary General pursuant to A/Res/67/254 (New York, October 10, 2014), http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A%2F69%2F517.

[19] Nathaniel Raymond, Caitlin Howarth, and Jonathan Hutson, “Crisis Mapping Needs an Ethical Compass,” Gobal Brief , February 6, 2012, http://globalbrief.ca/blog/2012/02/06/crisis-mapping-needs-an-ethical-compass/.

[20] Center for Social Media, 2014 Social Media Survey Results , Annual Survey (Alexandria, VA: International Association of Chiefs of Police, Fall 2014), http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/Publications/2014SurveyResults.aspx.

[21] Walter L. Perry et al., Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2013), http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt4cgdcz.

[22] “War in the Fifth Domain,” The Economist , July 1, 2010, http://www.economist.com/node/16478792.

[23] Igal Zeifman, Bot Traffic Is up to 61.5% of All Website Traffic , 2013 Report (Incapsula.com, December 9, 2013), http://www.incapsula.com/blog/bot-traffic-report-2013.html.

[24] Andrew Fishman and Glenn Greenwald, “Britain Used Spy Team to Shape Latin American Public Opinion on Falklands,” The Intercept , April 2, 2015, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/02/gchq-argentina-falklands/.

[25] “JTRIG Tools and Techniques,” The Intercept , July 14, 2014, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/07/14/jtrig-tools-techniques/.

[26] Rachel Ehrenberg, “Social Media Sway: Worries Over Political Misinformation on Twitter Attract Scientists’ Attention,” Science News 182, no. 8 (October 20, 2012): 22–25.

[27] UN Secretary General, Information and Communications Technology in the United Nations , para. 40.

[28] UN Secretary General, Information and Communications Technology in the United Nations .

[29] Sanjana Hattotuwa, “Big Data and Peacebuilding,” Stability: International Journal of Security & Development 2, no. 3 (November 19, 2013): 59, doi:10.5334/sta.ct.

[30] John Karlsrud, “Peacekeeping 4.0: Harnessing the Potential of Big Data, Social Media, and Cyber Technologies,” in Cyberspace and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges , ed. Jan-Frederik Kremer and Benedikt Müller, 2014 edition (New York: Springer, 2013), 155.

[31] Natasha Léger, “Satellite Imagery Is the Ultimate Big Data,” LBx Journal , December 11, 2014, http://www.lbxjournal.com/articles/satellite-imagery-ultimate-big-data/260516.

[32] Satellite Sentinel Project, Evidence of Burial of Human Remains in Kadugli, South Kordofan , Special Report (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, August 24, 2011), http://hhi.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/publications/publications%20-%20satellite%20-%20special%20report.pdf.

[33] Defense Information Systems Agency, “Information Volume & Velocity (IV2) - DTOMC35011_SS_IV2 (Archived) - Federal Business Opportunities: Opportunities,” accessed April 15, 2015, https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=6fda262f46fab5f5273c18b1607e079d&tab=core&_cview=0.

[34] United Nations Secretary-General, “About | United Nations Global Pulse,” UN Global Pulse , accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.unglobalpulse.org/about-new.

[35] Sheldon Himelfarb, “Can Big Data Stop Wars Before They Happen?,” Foreign Policy , April 25, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/25/can-big-data-stop-wars-before-they-happen/.

[36] Jan-Frederik Kremer and Benedikt Müller, eds., Cyberspace and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges , 2014 edition (New York: Springer, 2013), vii.

Related publications

Add new comment, restricted html.

• Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
• Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
• Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
• No HTML tags allowed.

St Andrews Research Repository

•   St Andrews Research Repository
• International Relations (School of)
• International Relations

International Relations Theses

• Register / Login

By Issue Date Names Titles Subjects Classification Type Funder

Search within this collection:

Our research is focused around three broad themes: conflict, peace and security; the evolving character of global and supra-national institutions; and the interpenetration of civil societies and international relations. In addition we have major strengths in area studies which help to ground our research into these broad thematic areas. Some of this activity is carried out under the umbrella of our various research centres, some within other collaborative contexts both within and outside the university, and some by individual researchers.

For more information please visit the School of International Relations home page.

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Recent Submissions

Title redacted , a 'new beginning' for what the strained peace of inter-referendum northern ireland (1998-2016) , peace cartels : internationally brokered power-sharing and perpetual oligarchy in bosnia and herzegovina and north macedonia , giovanni gentile : the heir of the risorgimento .

• Corpus ID: 220524281

Big Data in International Relations: Big Data in Conflict Prediction and Prevention

• Prof. dr. A.W.M André Gerrits
• Published 2015
• Political Science, Computer Science

50 References

Bigger sociological imaginations: framing big social data theory and methods, the value of using big data technologies in computational social science, new technology and the prevention of violence and conflict, digital humanitarians: how big data is changing the face of humanitarian response, critical questions for big data, a big data guide to understanding climate change: the case for theory-guided data science, big data: the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, easy data, hard data: the politics and pragmatics of twitter research after the computational turn, the data revolution : big data, open data, data infrastructures & their consequences, seven v's of big data understanding big data to extract value, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

Resource Guide for Program in International Relations Honor Thesis Research : Reference sources

Sage research methods.

• SAGE researchmethods SAGE Research Methods is a tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. Users can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings. Since SAGE Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and other areas of research.
• SAGE quantitative research methods
• SAGE qualitative research methods

Handbooks and Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics A reference source covering all aspects of global international relations and the contemporary discipline across IR's major subject divisions of diplomacy, military affairs, international political economy, and theory.
• Oxford handbooks online The complete texts of the Oxford handbooks in Archaeology, Business and Management, Classical Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Economics and Finance, History, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, and Sociology online. Extensive links make the online handbooks easy to navigate making these valuable reference resources more easily discoverable, accessible and searchable. Contains 13,000+ in-depth essays by the world's leading scholars.
• Oxford handbooks in political science online
• IBSS extra the international bibliography of the social sciences Bibliographic database compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Contains bibliographic information from an international selection of publications (including over 2600 journals and books, book reviews, and book chapters) in the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology.
• Next: Articles and policy reports >>
• Reference sources
• Jane's Defense and Security Intelligence
• International news
• Subject area databases with news
• Statistics and data
• Stanford Geospatial Center Support Resources
• Deposit your thesis in SDR

• Last Updated: Jul 31, 2024 1:59 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.stanford.edu/IRTheses

ODU Digital Commons

Home > Arts & Letters > GPIS > ETDs

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Theses and dissertations published by graduate students in the Graduate Program in International Studies, College of Arts & Letters, Old Dominion University, since Fall 2016 are available in this collection. Backfiles of all dissertations (and some theses) have also been added.

In late Fall 2023 or Spring 2024, all theses will be digitized and available here. In the meantime, consult the Library Catalog to find older items in print.

Theses/Dissertations from 2024 2024

Dissertation: The Place of Nuclear Weapons in Russian Identity: An Ontological Security Analysis , Peter Ernest Yeager

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Thesis: Crisis Narratives in Crisis? A Comparative Investigation into National COVID-19 Narratives , Mouse D. Bennett

Thesis: United States Foreign Policy and the Additions of Sweden and Finland to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , Kara Gwendolyn Broene

Thesis: The Solidarity Manifesto: A New Network for Future Change , Sofia Calicchio

Dissertation: Global Energy Consumption: An Analysis of Variables That Shape Per Capita Usage, or How Pump Price, Urbanization, and Fossil Fuels Imports Impact Fossil Fuels Consumption Per Capita Across OECD Countries , Mila Demchyk Savage

Thesis: U.S.-China Trade War: Phase One Agreement and Self-Enforcing Contracts , Hameedullah Hassani

Dissertation: Complex Dynamics of Contention: Towards a Generative Model of Social Dissent , Travis Holmes

Thesis: The Civil War Conflict Between Anglophones/Francophones in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon , Myriam Jeter

Dissertation: Opportunities and Challenges from Major Disasters Lessons Learned of Long-Term Recovery Group Members , Eduardo E. Landaeta

Dissertation: Can’t Let Go: Anxiety, Ontological Security, and French Foreign Policy Decision-Making During the Hollande Administration , Peter D. Langley

Dissertation: Attitudes of Ethnic Minorities Towards National Defense and Security in the Triadic Nexus: The Case of Russian-Speakers in Estonia , Nikita Lumijoe

Dissertation: Help-Seeking Behavior Among Resettled Refugee , Mahfoudha Sid’Elemine

Thesis: A Leftist Political Surge: How an Authoritarian Past Helped Spawn a Modern Political Movement in Spain and Portugal , Jared Sykes

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Dissertation: Thither the Russian Navy? Putin’s Navalization in a Historical Context , William Emerson Bunn

Dissertation: Securing Russia: Seeking Ontological Security in the Arctic , Brian W. Cole

Dissertation: The Expansion of NOCs: What Strengthening State-Owned Enterprises Means for Global Energy , Alexander L. Fretz

Thesis: The Carrot vs. the Stick: A Comparative Analysis of Secondary Sanctions vs. Positive Inducements in Gaining European Support for a U.S.-Led Sanction Regime , Andy Gomez

Dissertation: Remittance: A New Instrument for Change -- Understanding the Impact of Remittances on Home Countries Development , Alex M. Hamed

Dissertation: Russia, Europe and Central Asia Energy Security and Pipeline Politics , Mehmet Kınacı

Dissertation: The Political Economy of Global Private Currencies , Girish Sreevatsan Nandakumar

Thesis: Nord Stream 2: The Gas Curtain of Europe , Sarah Elizabeth Nelson

Dissertation: Present at the Creation, a Redux: The Need for Strategic Minded Joint Force Officers in a Rapidly Changing and Dynamic International Security Environment , Thomas Joseph Snukis

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Thesis: Mobilizing Discomfort for Water Security as a Human Right: A Newspaper Analysis of Social Conflict in South Africa , Madison Gonzalez

Dissertation: Reinterpreted Europe: An Assessment of EU (In) Ability to Deal with Threats to the Rule of Law , Huso Hasanovic

Dissertation: Connectivism: Adopting Quantum Holism in International Relations , Grant Randal Highland

Dissertation: State Antifragility: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach to Understanding State Behavior , Rebecca Lee Law

Thesis: Institutional Stretching: How Moroccan NGOs Illuminate the Nexus of Climate, Migration, Gender and Development , Shelby Mertens

Dissertation: The Second-Order Impact of Relative Power on Outcomes of Crisis Bargaining: A Theory of Expected Disutility and Resolve , Tatevik Movsisyan

Thesis: Language and Cultural Identity in Post-Soviet Frozen Conflicts , Irina Paquette

Dissertation: Smart Power in the Iraq Surge 2007-2008 , Russell N. Reiling

Dissertation: Re-Spatializing Gangs in the United States: An Analysis of Macro- and Micro-Level Network Structures , Ryan J. Roberts

Dissertation: Norm Contestation and Its Effects on Emergence of a New Norm , Khadijeh Salimi

Dissertation: Cybersecurity Legislation and Ransomware Attacks in the United States, 2015-2019 , Joseph Skertic

Dissertation: Environmentally Related Urbanization and Violence Potential , Christina Bagaglio Slentz

Dissertation: The Politics of Medicine: Power, Actors, and Ideas in the Making of Health , Claire Wulf Winiarek

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Thesis: Shifting Sources of Humanitarian Aid: The Importance of Network Resiliency and Donor Diversification , Mackenzie Marie Clark

Dissertation: Wicked Ideas for Wicked Problems: Marine Debris and the Complexity of Governance , Dawn Helene Driesbach

Thesis: A Comparative Approach to Racial Stereotyping in South Africa and the United States and How It Has Obliterated the Black Image , Maylat Tedla Eyob

Dissertation: Faits Accomplis in the Shadow of Shifting Power , Joshua Adam Hastey

Thesis: Stratified Security Communities: Transatlantic Distrust and Identity Divergence , Afra Maike Herr

Dissertation: The Path to Victory: A Comparative Analysis of Mena Region Countries , Negar Moayed

Dissertation: A Rivalry of Necessity: An Analysis of Mechanisms of Contention Between The Islamic Republic of Iran and The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , Aras Syahmanssuri

Thesis: The Study of Motivation for Defection Within the Intelligence Community: Hindering the Government's Ability to Prevent and Detect Defection , William Virgili

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Thesis: Hyperborean Habits and Melting Ice: The Normalization of Arctic Space and Resurgent National Identity , Ian Birdwell

Thesis: From Compassion to Resistance: Lesbos Refugee Crisis , Luz Diaz

Thesis: The G5 Sahel: An Insufficient Organization for a Failed Region? , Beder Dine El Khou

Dissertation: The Messy Nuclear Landscape: Using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping to Explore Plausible Nuclear Disarmament Scenarios , Ryan M. Nixon

Dissertation: The Trojan Horse in Your Head: Cognitive Threats and How to Counter Them , Lora Pitman

Dissertation: At the Hands of Fate: The Political Economy of Islamic Insurance in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan, C. 1980 to the Present , Muhammad S. Rahman

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Dissertation: Measuring Vulnerability Interdependence: To What Extent Do Chinese Investments in Africa Make China Vulnerable? , Nurullah Ayyilmaz

Dissertation: When the Wind Blows: An Evaluation of Key Factors that Enabled the Proliferation of Wind Energy Generation in the United States Through 2016 , Mary Sodini Bell

Thesis: Fem Media Matters: An Inqueery Into Campus Sexual Assault , Andrew Kennedy Garber

Thesis: Contemporary Russia in America's World: Russian Narratives on Post-Soviet Space , Marianna Portniagina

Dissertation: Throw Me a Lifeline: A Comparison of Port Cities with Antithetical Adaptation Strategies to Sea-Level Rise , Claudia Marie Risner

Dissertation: Beyond Carrots and Sticks: An Analysis of U.S. Approaches to Counterterrorism From 2000-2016 , Margaret M. Seymour

Thesis: The “Trump Effect?” Challenges to the United States Hegemony in Higher Education Cross-Cultural Exchange: A Case Study of International Students at Old Dominion University , Raven Alexandra Showalter

Thesis: The Effect of Illicit Drugs Securitization in Indonesia , Yanu Widiyono

Thesis: The Kosovo Moment: The United States and the Post-Cold War Balkans , Visar Xhambazi

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Dissertation: Diffusion of Renewable Energy Policies , Khatera Alizada

Dissertation: New Regionalism in Global Order: Regional Trade Integration and Its Links with Financial Sector , Tulu Balkir

Dissertation: Jointness, Culture, and Inter-Service Prejudice: Assessing the Impact of Resident, Satellite, and Hybrid Joint Professional Military Education II Course Delivery Methods on Military Officer Attitudes , Charles Mark Davis

Dissertation: Endpoints After Empire: Explaining Varying Levels of Democracy in Post-Communist Europe , William John Eger Jr.

Dissertation: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to the Maritime Security Risk of Piracy and Lessons Learned From Agent-Based Modeling , Joanne Marie Fish

Dissertation: The Treatment of Ethnic Minorities in Democratizing Muslim Countries: The Securitization of Kurds in Turkey Versus the Autonomization of Acehnese in Indonesia , Maurizio Geri

Dissertation: A Dirty Dilemma: Determinants of Electronic Waste Importation , Jamila N. Glover

Dissertation: Empty Chair at the Table: Bargaining, Costs and Litigation at the World Trade Organization , Felicia Anneita Grey

Dissertation: Acquiring the Tools of Grand Strategy: The US Navy's LCS as a Case Study , Sean P. Murphy

Dissertation: The Little Lady that Could: Small Latvia Rejoins the Euro-Atlantic Community , Sandis Sraders

Dissertation: The Memorialization of Historical Memories in East Asia , Bo Ram Yi

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Thesis: The Effects of Using Natural Gas in Light-Duty Vehicle Fleet of the United States on Its Energy Dependency and Greenhouse Gas Emissions , Nurullah Ayyilmaz

Dissertation: Assessing the Role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Extraterritorial Activities in Attaining Iran’s Foreign Policy Goals , Hamza Demirel

Dissertation: Culture and Military Effectiveness: How Societal Traits Influence Battle Outcomes , Eric Stephen Fowler

Dissertation: The Franchising Effect on the Al-Qaeda Enterprise and Related Transnational Terror Groups: Patterns of Evolution of Al-Qaeda Affiliates in the 21st Century , Nicholas Benjamin Law

Thesis: Under the Surface of Sex Trafficking: Socio-Economic and Cultural Perpetrators of Gender-Based Violence in India , Karmen Marie Matusek

Dissertation: Visegrad Revival: Where Less is More, in the Prospect of Smaller Numbers , Aaron G. Sander

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Dissertation: Armed Humanitarian Intervention: The Role of Powerful Leaders in Framing and the National Security Decision Making Process , John Marshall Callahan

Dissertation: U.S. Military Aid and the Role of Foreign Armies in Civil Politics , Jennifer Jones Cunningham

Dissertation: Removing the Rust: Comparative Post-Industrial Revitalization in Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh , Scott Nicholas Duryea

Dissertation: 'Home was Congo': Refugees and Durable Displacement in the Borderlands of 1,000 Hills , Erika Frydenlund

Thesis: Shaping American Foreign Policy A Game Theoretic Analysis of the United States'--North Korean Relationship , Kimberly Michelle Ganczak

Dissertation: Energy as a Factor for Turkish - Russian Rapprochement , Saltuk Bugra Karahan

Dissertation: Poverty Within Nation-States: The impact of Corruption, Trade, Income Inequality, Population Growth, Foreign Aid, and Military Expenditure , Mustafa Karapinar

Dissertation: Path Dependence in Intrastate Conflicts: Resources, Regimes, and Interventions , Ivan Medynskyi

Dissertation: Dwelling in Time, Dwelling in Structures: Disintegration in World Politics , Jan Adam Nalaskowski

Dissertation: Wildlife Crime and Other Challenges to Resource System Resilience , Patricia Anne Raxter

Dissertation: In Search of Autonomy: Nepal as a Wedge State Between India and China , Sagar Rijal

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Dissertation: Weak Links in a Dangerously Fractured Region: Fragile State as Global Threats , Tasawar ul-Rahim Baig

Dissertation: The Internet vs. the Nation-State: Prevention and Prosecution Challenges on the Internet in Republic of TürkiyI , Ersin Elibol

Dissertation: Ritualized Rhetoric and Historical Memory in German Foreign and Security Policy , Sara A. Hoff

Dissertation: What Constitutes the Success or Failure of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in Foreign Markets? A Case Study of Chinese and American MNCs , Shiwei Jiang

Dissertation: Tempering the Resource Curse in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Explanatory Analysis of the Variance of the Resource Curse in Nigeria and Botswana , Jody-Ann Suzette Jones

Dissertation: Neglecting the 'Right on Which All Other Rights Depend': Press Freedom in the International Human Rights Discourse , Wiebke Lamer

Dissertation: State-Centric or State-in-Society: National Identity and Collective Memory in the Linkage Politics of Chinese Foreign Relations , Ning Liao

Thesis: Transnational Organized Crime and the Illegal Wildlife Trade Global Ties and Global Crime , Zachariah Edward Long

Thesis: U.S. - ASEAN Organized Crime Cooperation as Part of Washington's Rebalancing Policy Toward the Asia-Pacific , Tuan Anh Luc

Dissertation: Explaining Nuclear Energy Pursuance: A Comparison of the United States, Germany, and Japan , Lauren Emily McKee

Thesis: Hijacking the Syrian Revolution , Iman Khairat Nanoua

Thesis: Human Torches: The Genesis of Self-Immolation in the Sociopolitical Context , Ryan Michael Nixon

Dissertation: Great Powers, the Persian Gulf, and Global Oil: A Comparative Analysis , Katerina Oskarsson

Dissertation: Democratic Counterinsurgents: How Democracies Can Prevail in Irregular Warfare , William Roland Patterson

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines
• Author Guidelines
• Submit Works
• Graduate Program in International Studies
• Other Digital Collections
• ODU Libraries
• Old Dominion University

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

• Greater Jakarta
• BINUS @Greater Jakarta
• BINUS @Bekasi
• BINUS @Bandung
• BINUS @Malang
• BINUS @Semarang
• About International Relations Program
• Organizational Structure
• Partnership
• Centre for Business and Diplomatic Studies (CBDS)
• Minor Program
• Mobility Program
• Enrichment Program
• Request Letters (for Students)
• Journal of ASEAN Studies
• Admission Schedule
• Entry Requirements
• Tuition Fee
• Scholarship
• BINUS UNIVERSITY
• Articles / IR and Technology

The Relevance of Big Data Analysis in the Study of International Relations

• IR and Technology

In today’s interconnected world, international relations play a crucial role in shaping global politics, economies, and societies. Understanding the complex dynamics of international relations is vital for policymakers, analysts, and scholars alike. In recent years, the emergence of big data has revolutionized various fields, and the study of international relations is no exception. This article explores the relevance of big data analysis in enhancing our understanding of international relations.

Unprecedented Data Availability

Big data refers to the vast amount of structured and unstructured data generated from diverse sources, such as social media, online platforms, satellite imagery, and government records. This unprecedented availability of data provides researchers with an invaluable resource to explore international relations with a level of depth and granularity previously unimaginable.

Enhanced Predictive Capabilities

One of the key advantages of big data analysis in international relations is its ability to improve predictive capabilities. By analyzing large volumes of data, researchers can identify patterns, correlations, and trends that can assist in predicting geopolitical events, conflict escalation, economic trends, and social unrest. This analytical approach can help governments and organizations make more informed decisions and develop effective strategies to mitigate potential risks.

Understanding Public Opinion and Sentiments

Public opinion and sentiments play a significant role in shaping international relations. With the advent of social media and online platforms, people around the world have a platform to express their views and sentiments on various global issues. Big data analysis enables researchers to analyze and interpret these vast streams of data to gain insights into public opinion and sentiment dynamics across different countries and regions. This understanding can be instrumental in shaping diplomatic strategies, public diplomacy efforts, and crisis management.

Identifying Emerging Threats and Challenges

Big data analysis offers the potential to identify emerging threats and challenges in the realm of international relations. By analyzing data from diverse sources, researchers can detect early warning signals related to security threats, terrorist activities, disease outbreaks, and environmental issues. This information can be utilized to develop proactive measures, enhance preparedness, and strengthen international cooperation to address these challenges effectively.

Policy Formulation and Evaluation

Effective policymaking requires accurate and up-to-date information. Big data analysis provides policymakers with access to a vast array of data that can inform their decision-making processes. By analyzing large datasets, policymakers can identify trends, evaluate the impact of previous policies, and design evidence-based strategies. Additionally, big data analysis allows for real-time monitoring of policy implementation and evaluation, enabling policymakers to make timely adjustments when necessary.

Challenges and Ethical Considerations

While big data analysis holds tremendous potential for the study of international relations, it also presents challenges and ethical considerations. Ensuring data privacy, protecting personal information, and maintaining data security are critical concerns that need to be addressed. Additionally, biases in data collection and analysis must be carefully considered to avoid reinforcing existing prejudices or inequalities.

In conclusion, big data analysis has significantly enhanced the study of international relations. By harnessing the power of big data, researchers can gain unprecedented insights into global dynamics, predict future events, understand public opinion, identify emerging threats, and formulate evidence-based policies. However, it is essential to navigate the challenges and ethical considerations associated with big data analysis to ensure its responsible and constructive use in the field of international relations. As technology continues to evolve, the potential of big data analysis in understanding and shaping global affairs is likely to expand, offering exciting opportunities for researchers, policymakers, and analysts alike.

Read the article about some possible research agenda regarding the issue here.

Read This Article in Bahasa Indonesia

Last updated : June 30, 2023 00:00

Your browser is not fully compatible with the features of our website.

• How It Works
• PhD thesis writing
• Master thesis writing
• Bachelor thesis writing
• Dissertation writing service
• Dissertation abstract writing
• Thesis proposal writing
• Thesis editing service
• Thesis proofreading service
• Thesis formatting service
• Coursework writing service
• Research paper writing service
• Architecture thesis writing
• Computer science thesis writing
• Engineering thesis writing
• History thesis writing
• MBA thesis writing
• Nursing dissertation writing
• Psychology dissertation writing
• Sociology thesis writing
• Statistics dissertation writing
• Buy dissertation online
• Write my dissertation
• Cheap thesis
• Cheap dissertation
• Custom dissertation
• Dissertation help
• Pay for thesis
• Pay for dissertation
• Senior thesis
• Write my thesis

214 Best Big Data Research Topics for Your Thesis Paper

Finding an ideal big data research topic can take you a long time. Big data, IoT, and robotics have evolved. The future generations will be immersed in major technologies that will make work easier. Work that was done by 10 people will now be done by one person or a machine. This is amazing because, in as much as there will be job loss, more jobs will be created. It is a win-win for everyone.

Big data is a major topic that is being embraced globally. Data science and analytics are helping institutions, governments, and the private sector. We will share with you the best big data research topics.

On top of that, we can offer you the best writing tips to ensure you prosper well in your academics. As students in the university, you need to do proper research to get top grades. Hence, you can consult us if in need of research paper writing services.

Big Data Analytics Research Topics for your Research Project

Are you looking for an ideal big data analytics research topic? Once you choose a topic, consult your professor to evaluate whether it is a great topic. This will help you to get good grades.

• Which are the best tools and software for big data processing?
• Evaluate the security issues that face big data.
• An analysis of large-scale data for social networks globally.
• The influence of big data storage systems.
• The best platforms for big data computing.
• The relation between business intelligence and big data analytics.
• The importance of semantics and visualization of big data.
• Analysis of big data technologies for businesses.
• The common methods used for machine learning in big data.
• The difference between self-turning and symmetrical spectral clustering.
• The importance of information-based clustering.
• Evaluate the hierarchical clustering and density-based clustering application.
• How is data mining used to analyze transaction data?
• The major importance of dependency modeling.
• The influence of probabilistic classification in data mining.

Interesting Big Data Analytics Topics

Who said big data had to be boring? Here are some interesting big data analytics topics that you can try. They are based on how some phenomena are done to make the world a better place.

• Discuss the privacy issues in big data.
• Evaluate the storage systems of scalable in big data.
• The best big data processing software and tools.
• Data mining tools and techniques are popularly used.
• Evaluate the scalable architectures for parallel data processing.
• The major natural language processing methods.
• Which are the best big data tools and deployment platforms?
• The best algorithms for data visualization.
• Analyze the anomaly detection in cloud servers
• The scrutiny normally done for the recruitment of big data job profiles.
• The malicious user detection in big data collection.
• Learning long-term dependencies via the Fourier recurrent units.
• Nomadic computing for big data analytics.
• The elementary estimators for graphical models.
• The memory-efficient kernel approximation.

Big Data Latest Research Topics

Do you know the latest research topics at the moment? These 15 topics will help you to dive into interesting research. You may even build on research done by other scholars.

• Evaluate the data mining process.
• The influence of the various dimension reduction methods and techniques.
• The best data classification methods.
• The simple linear regression modeling methods.
• Evaluate the logistic regression modeling.
• What are the commonly used theorems?
• The influence of cluster analysis methods in big data.
• The importance of smoothing methods analysis in big data.
• How is fraud detection done through AI?
• Analyze the use of GIS and spatial data.
• How important is artificial intelligence in the modern world?
• What is agile data science?
• Analyze the behavioral analytics process.
• Semantic analytics distribution.
• How is domain knowledge important in data analysis?

Big Data Debate Topics

If you want to prosper in the field of big data, you need to try even hard topics. These big data debate topics are interesting and will help you to get a better understanding.

• The difference between big data analytics and traditional data analytics methods.
• Why do you think the organization should think beyond the Hadoop hype?
• Does the size of the data matter more than how recent the data is?
• Is it true that bigger data are not always better?
• The debate of privacy and personalization in maintaining ethics in big data.
• The relation between data science and privacy.
• Do you think data science is a rebranding of statistics?
• Who delivers better results between data scientists and domain experts?
• According to your view, is data science dead?
• Do you think analytics teams need to be centralized or decentralized?
• The best methods to resource an analytics team.
• The best business case for investing in analytics.
• The societal implications of the use of predictive analytics within Education.
• Is there a need for greater control to prevent experimentation on social media users without their consent?
• How is the government using big data; for the improvement of public statistics or to control the population?

University Dissertation Topics on Big Data

Are you doing your Masters or Ph.D. and wondering the best dissertation topic or thesis to do? Why not try any of these? They are interesting and based on various phenomena. While doing the research ensure you relate the phenomenon with the current modern society.

• The machine learning algorithms are used for fall recognition.
• The divergence and convergence of the internet of things.
• The reliable data movements using bandwidth provision strategies.
• How is big data analytics using artificial neural networks in cloud gaming?
• How is Twitter accounts classification done using network-based features?
• How is online anomaly detection done in the cloud collaborative environment?
• Evaluate the public transportation insights provided by big data.
• Evaluate the paradigm for cancer patients using the nursing EHR to predict the outcome.
• Discuss the current data lossless compression in the smart grid.
• How does online advertising traffic prediction helps in boosting businesses?
• How is the hyperspectral classification done using the multiple kernel learning paradigm?
• The analysis of large data sets downloaded from websites.
• How does social media data help advertising companies globally?
• Which are the systems recognizing and enforcing ownership of data records?
• The alternate possibilities emerging for edge computing.

The Best Big Data Analysis Research Topics and Essays

There are a lot of issues that are associated with big data. Here are some of the research topics that you can use in your essays. These topics are ideal whether in high school or college.

• The various errors and uncertainty in making data decisions.
• The application of big data on tourism.
• The automation innovation with big data or related technology
• The business models of big data ecosystems.
• Privacy awareness in the era of big data and machine learning.
• The data privacy for big automotive data.
• How is traffic managed in defined data center networks?
• Big data analytics for fault detection.
• The need for machine learning with big data.
• The innovative big data processing used in health care institutions.
• The money normalization and extraction from texts.
• How is text categorization done in AI?
• The opportunistic development of data-driven interactive applications.
• The use of data science and big data towards personalized medicine.
• The programming and optimization of big data applications.

The Latest Big Data Research Topics for your Research Proposal

Doing a research proposal can be hard at first unless you choose an ideal topic. If you are just diving into the big data field, you can use any of these topics to get a deeper understanding.

• The data-centric network of things.
• Big data management using artificial intelligence supply chain.
• The big data analytics for maintenance.
• The high confidence network predictions for big biological data.
• The performance optimization techniques and tools for data-intensive computation platforms.
• The predictive modeling in the legal context.
• Analysis of large data sets in life sciences.
• How to understand the mobility and transport modal disparities sing emerging data sources?
• How do you think data analytics can support asset management decisions?
• An analysis of travel patterns for cellular network data.
• The data-driven strategic planning for citywide building retrofitting.
• How is money normalization done in data analytics?
• Major techniques used in data mining.
• The big data adaptation and analytics of cloud computing.
• The predictive data maintenance for fault diagnosis.

Interesting Research Topics on A/B Testing In Big Data

A/B testing topics are different from the normal big data topics. However, you use an almost similar methodology to find the reasons behind the issues. These topics are interesting and will help you to get a deeper understanding.

• How is ultra-targeted marketing done?
• The transition of A/B testing from digital to offline.
• How can big data and A/B testing be done to win an election?
• Evaluate the use of A/B testing on big data
• Evaluate A/B testing as a randomized control experiment.
• How does A/B testing work?
• The mistakes to avoid while conducting the A/B testing.
• The most ideal time to use A/B testing.
• The best way to interpret results for an A/B test.
• The major principles of A/B tests.
• Evaluate the cluster randomization in big data
• The best way to analyze A/B test results and the statistical significance.
• How is A/B testing used in boosting businesses?
• The importance of data analysis in conversion research
• The importance of A/B testing in data science.

Amazing Research Topics on Big Data and Local Governments

Governments are now using big data to make the lives of the citizens better. This is in the government and the various institutions. They are based on real-life experiences and making the world better.

• Assess the benefits and barriers of big data in the public sector.
• The best approach to smart city data ecosystems.
• The big analytics used for policymaking.
• Evaluate the smart technology and emergence algorithm bureaucracy.
• Evaluate the use of citizen scoring in public services.
• An analysis of the government administrative data globally.
• The public values are found in the era of big data.
• Public engagement on local government data use.
• Data analytics use in policymaking.
• How are algorithms used in public sector decision-making?
• The democratic governance in the big data era.
• The best business model innovation to be used in sustainable organizations.
• How does the government use the collected data from various sources?
• The role of big data for smart cities.
• How does big data play a role in policymaking?

Easy Research Topics on Big Data

Who said big data topics had to be hard? Here are some of the easiest research topics. They are based on data management, research, and data retention. Pick one and try it!

• Who uses big data analytics?
• Evaluate structure machine learning.
• Explain the whole deep learning process.
• Which are the best ways to manage platforms for enterprise analytics?
• Which are the new technologies used in data management?
• What is the importance of data retention?
• The best way to work with images is when doing research.
• The best way to promote research outreach is through data management.
• The best way to source and manage external data.
• Does machine learning improve the quality of data?
• Describe the security technologies that can be used in data protection.
• Evaluate token-based authentication and its importance.
• How can poor data security lead to the loss of information?
• How to determine secure data.
• What is the importance of centralized key management?

Unique IoT and Big Data Research Topics

Internet of Things has evolved and many devices are now using it. There are smart devices, smart cities, smart locks, and much more. Things can now be controlled by the touch of a button.

• Evaluate the 5G networks and IoT.
• Analyze the use of Artificial intelligence in the modern world.
• How do ultra-power IoT technologies work?
• Evaluate the adaptive systems and models at runtime.
• How have smart cities and smart environments improved the living space?
• The importance of the IoT-based supply chains.
• How does smart agriculture influence water management?
• The internet applications naming and identifiers.
• How does the smart grid influence energy management?
• Which are the best design principles for IoT application development?
• The best human-device interactions for the Internet of Things.
• The relation between urban dynamics and crowdsourcing services.
• The best wireless sensor network for IoT security.
• The best intrusion detection in IoT.
• The importance of big data on the Internet of Things.

Big Data Database Research Topics You Should Try

Big data is broad and interesting. These big data database research topics will put you in a better place in your research. You also get to evaluate the roles of various phenomena.

• The best cloud computing platforms for big data analytics.
• The parallel programming techniques for big data processing.
• The importance of big data models and algorithms in research.
• Evaluate the role of big data analytics for smart healthcare.
• How is big data analytics used in business intelligence?
• The best machine learning methods for big data.
• Evaluate the Hadoop programming in big data analytics.
• What is privacy-preserving to big data analytics?
• The best tools for massive big data processing
• IoT deployment in Governments and Internet service providers.
• How will IoT be used for future internet architectures?
• How does big data close the gap between research and implementation?
• What are the cross-layer attacks in IoT?
• The influence of big data and smart city planning in society.
• Why do you think user access control is important?

Big Data Scala Research Topics

Scala is a programming language that is used in data management. It is closely related to other data programming languages. Here are some of the best scala questions that you can research.

• Which are the most used languages in big data?
• How is scala used in big data research?
• Is scala better than Java in big data?
• How is scala a concise programming language?
• How does the scala language stream process in real-time?
• Which are the various libraries for data science and data analysis?
• How does scala allow imperative programming in data collection?
• Evaluate how scala includes a useful REPL for interaction.
• Evaluate scala’s IDE support.
• The data catalog reference model.
• Evaluate the basics of data management and its influence on research.
• Discuss the behavioral analytics process.
• What can you term as the experience economy?
• The difference between agile data science and scala language.
• Explain the graph analytics process.

Independent Research Topics for Big Data

These independent research topics for big data are based on the various technologies and how they are related. Big data will greatly be important for modern society.

• The biggest investment is in big data analysis.
• How are multi-cloud and hybrid settings deep roots?
• Why do you think machine learning will be in focus for a long while?
• Discuss in-memory computing.
• What is the difference between edge computing and in-memory computing?
• The relation between the Internet of things and big data.
• How will digital transformation make the world a better place?
• How does data analysis help in social network optimization?
• How will complex big data be essential for future enterprises?
• Compare the various big data frameworks.
• The best way to gather and monitor traffic information using the CCTV images
• Evaluate the hierarchical structure of groups and clusters in the decision tree.
• Which are the 3D mapping techniques for live streaming data.
• How does machine learning help to improve data analysis?
• Evaluate DataStream management in task allocation.
• How is big data provisioned through edge computing?
• The model-based clustering of texts.
• The best ways to manage big data.
• The use of machine learning in big data.

Is Your Big Data Thesis Giving You Problems?

These are some of the best topics that you can use to prosper in your studies. Not only are they easy to research but also reflect on real-time issues. Whether in University or college, you need to put enough effort into your studies to prosper. However, if you have time constraints, we can provide professional writing help. Are you looking for online expert writers? Look no further, we will provide quality work at a cheap price.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment * Error message

Name * Error message

Email * Error message

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

As Putin continues killing civilians, bombing kindergartens, and threatening WWIII, Ukraine fights for the world's peaceful future.

Ukraine Live Updates