Communication, Networks and Contention

The 'data revolution' offers many new opportunities for research in the social sciences. Increasingly, social and political interactions can be recorded digitally, leading to vast amounts of new data available for research. This poses new challenges for organizing and processing research data. This comprehensive introduction covers the entire range of data management techniques, from flat files to database management systems. The book covers simple tools such as spreadsheets and file-based data storage and processing, as well as more powerful data management software like relational databases. It goes on to address advanced topics such as spatial data, text as data, and network data. This book is one of the first to discuss questions of practical data management specifically for social science projects.

The book is available open access, additional material is provided on the companion website.  

In an article published in Research and Politics, Rebecca Strauch and Nils Weidmann show that citizens in autocracies adapt digitally in response to political protest in their country, with an increased reliance on the Tor encryption network. This increase is particular prevalent for countries with high levels of digital censorship.

https://doi.org/10.1177/20531680221100440

Governments in autocracies do not respond to all protests with repression. Rather, this depends on protests going against the particular legitimacy claims the regime is built on. Eda Keremoglu, Sebastian Hellmeier and Nils Weidmann's work on this question has been published in Political Science Research and Methods.

https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2021.19