A Method for Leveraging Public Information Sources for Social Science Research

近年来，学者们已经取得了很大的进步，使用计算机辅助方法收集和分析大量的机器可读信息，从开放的来源，如在线新闻提要和新的社交媒体，以帮助这些努力。 其结果是以前所未有的规模和速度生产和分析大量数据。 个别学者和研究团队已经尝试了多种方法来收集和分析这些数据。 这种试验促进了创新和探索，但也产生了一系列没有很好地整合或协调的数据集和方法。其结果是，学者和政策制定者从这些数据中学到的东西比他们本可以学到的要少。 该项目旨在克服这一障碍，发展建立共同最佳做法所需的社区和能力，并促进数据收集、传播和分析方面的更大一体化和协调。作为开发过程的一部分，研究人员将专注于从新闻报道等公共文件中提取信息。该项目的范围包括涉及非暴力政治抗议、恐怖主义和国家间战争等分歧的事件--这些问题长期以来一直是社会科学研究的主题。该项目将通过一系列讲习班来实现这一目标，这些讲习班将汇集国家间和国家内冲突、数据管理、定量方法、和计算机科学来制定一个协调的前进战略。 在举办这些讲习班的同时，该项目还将开发一个软件工具原型系统，用于收集和存档此类数据，并在使用数据和工具集方面开展广泛的教育宣传和培训方案。 整个项目将由一个专家咨询委员会监督，该项目将提高了解有争议的政治事件的预警迹象、导致其升级或降级的原因以及此类事件的后果的能力。 该项目还将促进对用于分析冲突的大规模近实时数据收集的理解，以及更普遍地管理、共享和分析此类数据集所需的工具。 更广泛地说，该项目将为来自学术界、政府、工业和非营利部门的研究人员提供一个巨大的新的开放数据资源。 它将提供使用数据的培训机会，并为面向数据的教育计划提供基础，这些计划是为从中学到研究生院的学生设计的，可以帮助学生了解国家间和国家内部冲突的原因和后果。 最后，该项目将帮助决策者做出更好的决策，这可能会减少政治冲突的频率和/或规模，并最终有助于拯救生命。

In recent years, scholars have made great strides using computer-assisted methods to collect and analyze large volumes of machine-readable information from open sources such as online news feeds and the new social media to aid in these efforts. The result has been the production and analysis of massive amounts of data at unprecedented scales and speeds. Individual scholars and research teams have experimented with multiple approaches to collecting and analyzing such data. This experimentation has promoted innovation and exploration, but it has also produced an array of data sets and methodologies that are not well integrated or coordinated. The result is that scholars and policy makers alike are learning less from these data than they could. This project seeks to overcome that obstacle by developing the community and capacity needed to establish common best practices and foster greater integration and coordination regarding the collection, dissemination, and analysis of data. As part of this development process researchers will focus on extracting information from public documents such as news reports. The scope includes events which involve disagreement ranging from nonviolent political protest to terrorism and interstate war - issues which have long been a subject of inquiry in the social sciences.The project will accomplish this through a series of workshops that will bring together national leaders in the areas of inter-state and intra-state conflict, data management, quantitative methods, and computer science to develop a coordinated strategy for moving forward. In conjunction with these workshops, the project will develop a prototype system of software tools designed to collect and archive such data, as well as conducting extensive educational outreach and training programs in the use of the data and tool sets. The entire project will be supervised an advisory board of specialists.The project will advance the capacity for learning about the early warning signs of contentious political events, what leads to their escalation or de-escalation, and the resulting consequences of such events. The project will also advance understanding of massive near-real-time data collection for the analysis of conflicts as well as the tools needed to manage, share, and analyze such data sets more generally. More broadly, this project will provide access to a vast new open data resource for researchers from academia, government, industry, and the non-profit sector. It will provide training opportunities for using the data, and also provide the foundation for data-oriented education programs designed for students ranging from middle school through graduate school that can help students learn about the causes and consequences of inter-state and intra-state conflict. Finally, the project will help policy makers make better decisions, which could potentially reduce the frequency and/or scale of political conflicts, and ultimately help to save lives.