Category: GDELT

Protest is nothing new

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Yes, throughout the history of human being, protests have been here and there though fresh protest news cover on GoogleNews every day. [i] [ii] If we only count massive protests from 19th century, there were strong collective voices of French Revolution in 1848, Russian Revolution in 1917, 1968 protests in the world and Eastern Europe in 1989, and these were the generator of social changes each time.  

  

Not going too far away till the 19th century, more than 200 million protests have impacted on the life of people since 1979 despite ignoring hidden and unknown events.[iii] However, the number of protest has not been increasing so far based on the data of GDELT which is a research group to collect global political unrest data and provide daily report with geo-spatial data. It would mean that as growing the opportunities to see the news about protests, we might believe that protests have been common than in the past.[iv]

 

What is the key factor to force people into the street?

Recently, Bridge, Marsh and Sweeting (2013) argue the change of governing structure, from government to governance, is the essence of recent protests.[v] According to their opinion, it stimulates governments work together with private sectors and communities, so the boundary of different organisations is blurring far more than before. The changing forms of the organisations extend to the shifting role of citizens, emphasizing new forms of networks and accountability, and finally the nature of democracy. Amid this transition, people are more interested in direct citizenship, and we have been readily watching one form of direct democracy, protest.


Meanwhile, Castells (2012) insists that we need to consider the transformation of communication to understand current protests.[vi] The development of internet technology facilitates that people can send messages many to many and share resources with horizontal-endless networks by themselves. On the internet, which is an autonomous space and no government control by Castells’ opinion, people try to change power relationships around them for ‘a better humanity’ when the relationships disrupt their life. When desires and goals of people are emerging in urban spaces beyond the internet, we could watch them such as Arab Spring and Occupy movements.

 

[ii] Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements, illustrated edition (Hodder Arnold, 1983).
[iii] Joshua Keating, “What Can We Learn from the Last 200 Million Things That Happened in the World?,” Foreign Policy Blogs, April 12, 2013, http://atfp.co/1cXGpaX
[iv] J Dana Stuster, “Mapped: Every Protest On The Planet Since 1979,” accessed January 8, 2014, http://bit.ly/KBBl1H.
[v] Gary Bridge, Alex Marsh, and David Sweeting, “Reconfiguring the Local Public Realm,” Policy&Politics 41, no. 3 (n.d.): 305–309. http://www.policypress.co.uk/journals_pap.asp

[vi] Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Polity Press, 2012).

 

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Castells, GDELT, history, internet, protest, social movement

Protest is nothing new

Posted on by
 

Yes, throughout the history of human being, protests have been here and there though fresh protest news cover on GoogleNews every day. [i] [ii] If we only count massive protests from 19th century, there were strong collective voices of French Revolution in 1848, Russian Revolution in 1917, 1968 protests in the world and Eastern Europe in 1989, and these were the generator of social changes each time.  

  

Not going too far away till the 19th century, more than 200 million protests have impacted on the life of people since 1979 despite ignoring hidden and unknown events.[iii] However, the number of protest has not been increasing so far based on the data of GDELT which is a research group to collect global political unrest data and provide daily report with geo-spatial data. It would mean that as growing the opportunities to see the news about protests, we might believe that protests have been common than in the past.[iv]

 

What is the key factor to force people into the street?

Recently, Bridge, Marsh and Sweeting (2013) argue the change of governing structure, from government to governance, is the essence of recent protests.[v] According to their opinion, it stimulates governments work together with private sectors and communities, so the boundary of different organisations is blurring far more than before. The changing forms of the organisations extend to the shifting role of citizens, emphasizing new forms of networks and accountability, and finally the nature of democracy. Amid this transition, people are more interested in direct citizenship, and we have been readily watching one form of direct democracy, protest.


Meanwhile, Castells (2012) insists that we need to consider the transformation of communication to understand current protests.[vi] The development of internet technology facilitates that people can send messages many to many and share resources with horizontal-endless networks by themselves. On the internet, which is an autonomous space and no government control by Castells’ opinion, people try to change power relationships around them for ‘a better humanity’ when the relationships disrupt their life. When desires and goals of people are emerging in urban spaces beyond the internet, we could watch them such as Arab Spring and Occupy movements.

 

[ii] Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements, illustrated edition (Hodder Arnold, 1983).
[iii] Joshua Keating, “What Can We Learn from the Last 200 Million Things That Happened in the World?,” Foreign Policy Blogs, April 12, 2013, http://atfp.co/1cXGpaX
[iv] J Dana Stuster, “Mapped: Every Protest On The Planet Since 1979,” accessed January 8, 2014, http://bit.ly/KBBl1H.
[v] Gary Bridge, Alex Marsh, and David Sweeting, “Reconfiguring the Local Public Realm,” Policy&Politics 41, no. 3 (n.d.): 305–309. http://www.policypress.co.uk/journals_pap.asp

[vi] Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Polity Press, 2012).

 

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Castells, GDELT, history, internet, protest, social movement

Protest is nothing new

Posted on by
 

Yes, throughout the history of human being, protests have been here and there though fresh protest news cover on GoogleNews every day. [i] [ii] If we only count massive protests from 19th century, there were strong collective voices of French Revolution in 1848, Russian Revolution in 1917, 1968 protests in the world and Eastern Europe in 1989, and these were the generator of social changes each time.  

  

Not going too far away till the 19th century, more than 200 million protests have impacted on the life of people since 1979 despite ignoring hidden and unknown events.[iii] However, the number of protest has not been increasing so far based on the data of GDELT which is a research group to collect global political unrest data and provide daily report with geo-spatial data. It would mean that as growing the opportunities to see the news about protests, we might believe that protests have been common than in the past.[iv]

 

What is the key factor to force people into the street?

Recently, Bridge, Marsh and Sweeting (2013) argue the change of governing structure, from government to governance, is the essence of recent protests.[v] According to their opinion, it stimulates governments work together with private sectors and communities, so the boundary of different organisations is blurring far more than before. The changing forms of the organisations extend to the shifting role of citizens, emphasizing new forms of networks and accountability, and finally the nature of democracy. Amid this transition, people are more interested in direct citizenship, and we have been readily watching one form of direct democracy, protest.


Meanwhile, Castells (2012) insists that we need to consider the transformation of communication to understand current protests.[vi] The development of internet technology facilitates that people can send messages many to many and share resources with horizontal-endless networks by themselves. On the internet, which is an autonomous space and no government control by Castells’ opinion, people try to change power relationships around them for ‘a better humanity’ when the relationships disrupt their life. When desires and goals of people are emerging in urban spaces beyond the internet, we could watch them such as Arab Spring and Occupy movements.

 

[ii] Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements, illustrated edition (Hodder Arnold, 1983).
[iii] Joshua Keating, “What Can We Learn from the Last 200 Million Things That Happened in the World?,” Foreign Policy Blogs, April 12, 2013, http://atfp.co/1cXGpaX
[iv] J Dana Stuster, “Mapped: Every Protest On The Planet Since 1979,” accessed January 8, 2014, http://bit.ly/KBBl1H.
[v] Gary Bridge, Alex Marsh, and David Sweeting, “Reconfiguring the Local Public Realm,” Policy&Politics 41, no. 3 (n.d.): 305–309. http://www.policypress.co.uk/journals_pap.asp

[vi] Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Polity Press, 2012).

 

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Castells, GDELT, history, internet, protest, social movement

The World Protests by GDELT

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Image 1. All GDELT protest data for 2013. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below)

Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) is a remarkable organisation to provide, freely, the data of all human behaviours, particularly protest, over the world since 1979. They are trying to make “real-time social sciences earth observatory” by updating the data every day. It is running by three researchers, Kalev Leetaru, Philip Schrodt and Patrick Brandt. 
 
If you visit their website and their blog, you would be surprised by their enormous data set as well as effective and nice visualisation. For example, recent GDELT’s work is showing protest movement in 2013. (Image 1) This interactive map illustrates how many protests have been raising in the world a year including Egypt, Brazil and Turkey, and we can recognise that the flame of protests are covering the world even though the data would not report all hidden protests.
 
Image 2. Syria’s civil war. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below) 
 
Another map describes the terrific condition of Syria’s civil war in detail. (Image 2) Visualising the location, the number of violence per day and the period of the civil war together warns us how the situation is significant much more than just some sentences and images of broadcasting news. It was issued on The Guardian.  
 
However, the most important thing is their continuous effort to collect the data, sort it out and provide the valuable data for further research. Opening the data might not be an easy decision and it would be a extremely time-consuming work.
 
After visiting the website of GDELT, Networking City understood the importance of open data, its impacts and the power of visualisation, and promised to work hard and being more opened.
 
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Big Data, Data Visualisation, GDELT, Open Data, protest, Syria, urban planning

The World Protests by GDELT

Posted on by

 


Image 1. All GDELT protest data for 2013. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below)

Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) is a remarkable organisation to provide, freely, the data of all human behaviours, particularly protest, over the world since 1979. They are trying to make “real-time social sciences earth observatory” by updating the data every day. It is running by three researchers, Kalev Leetaru, Philip Schrodt and Patrick Brandt. 
 
If you visit their website and their blog, you would be surprised by their enormous data set as well as effective and nice visualisation. For example, recent GDELT’s work is showing protest movement in 2013. (Image 1) This interactive map illustrates how many protests have been raising in the world a year including Egypt, Brazil and Turkey, and we can recognise that the flame of protests are covering the world even though the data would not report all hidden protests.
 
Image 2. Syria’s civil war. The image was captured from GDELT’s work. (See below) 
 
Another map describes the terrific condition of Syria’s civil war in detail. (Image 2) Visualising the location, the number of violence per day and the period of the civil war together warns us how the situation is significant much more than just some sentences and images of broadcasting news. It was issued on The Guardian.  
 
However, the most important thing is their continuous effort to collect the data, sort it out and provide the valuable data for further research. Opening the data might not be an easy decision and it would be a extremely time-consuming work.
 
After visiting the website of GDELT, Networking City understood the importance of open data, its impacts and the power of visualisation, and promised to work hard and being more opened.
 
Continue reading »
Big Data, Data Visualisation, GDELT, Open Data, protest, Syria, urban planning