Project Description
Aims and Central Research Question
To better understand the causes that lead to ethnic violence, we investigate the causal connection between perceived inequality and violent mobilization. We develop new ways of measuring how group members perceive inequality and how group elites construct grievances.
Our primary focus is on the ways in which structural inequalities lead to perceived inequalities and the role of ethnic entrepreneurs and organizations; the mechanisms by which perceived inequality leads to mobilization and the risk of violence; and the linguistic means used by ethnic elites in this mobilization.
Background
It has been argued that grievances stemming from inequality provide a key motivation for conflict behaviour. However, structural inequalities are not equivalent to grievances; rather, structural inequalities are sometimes perceived as important, but sometimes not. It is often assumed that group elites play a crucial role in the framing of ethnic issues, but how these elites do so has not been empirically studied.
We empirically test whether elite messages are really crucial to the construction of grievances, aiming to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the link between actual inequality, perceived inequality, and collective mobilization.
Methods
The project benefits from our interdisciplinary background and approach. It combines new data collections and the development of innovative Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques as well as case studies of ethnic mobilization processes in selected countries for the study of online communication by groups and their central actors.
We expect new insights into the general role of inequality during mobilization for violent conflict. The project also offers a perspective on the process by which inequality issues enter the group discourse and how political elites use them for strategic purposes.
Project Partners
Manuel Vogt (University College London)
Manuel Vogt is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at University College London (UCL) and the author of "Mobilization and Conflict in Multiethnic States". He received his Ph.D. in political science from ETH Zürich and was subsequently a visiting postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. He also spent two months as a visiting researcher at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador, and two terms as an Amity Institute intern at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Find more information about Manuel Vogt here.
Karsten Donnay (University of Zurich)
Karsten Donnay received a PhD in Computational Social Science from ETH Zurich in 2014. After postdoctoral positions at the Graduate Institute Geneva and the University of Maryland, he was Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz from 2016 to 2020. Since April 1st 2020 he is Assistant Professor of Political Behavior and Digital Media in the Department of Political Science and part of the Digital Society Initiative of the University of Zurich.
Find more information about Karsten Donnay here.
Literature
Publications
Gremler, Frederik & Nils B. Weidmann. “Ethnic Politics via Digital Means: Introducing the Ethnic Organizations Online (EO2) Dataset”. Journal of Peace Research, accepted for publication.
Haiges, Lea. 2024. “Inside Identity Appeals: How Ethnic Parties Adapt their Communication to Changing Conditions”. Dissertation. University of Konstanz, Konstanz.
Haiges, Lea, and Christina Isabel Zuber. 2024. “Within, Rather than against the State? How Indigenous Movements in Ecuador and Peru Engage with Elections.” Working Paper No. 32. Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality’’. https://doi.org/10.48787/kops/352-2-muafltj55uw2.
Gremler, Frederik. 2023. “Ethnic Organizations Online". Dissertation. University of Konstanz, Konstanz.
Rød, Espen Geelmuyden, and Nils B. Weidmann. 2023. “From Bad to Worse? How Protest Can Foster Armed Conflict in Autocracies.” Political Geography 103:Article 102891. https://doi.org/10/gsbvp4.
Siskou, Wassiliki, Clara Giralt Mirón, Sarah Molina-Raith, and Miriam Butt. 2022. “Automatized Detection and Annotation for Calls to Action in Latin-American Social Media Postings.” In Proceedings of the 6th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature, edited by Stefania Degaetano, Anna Kazantseva, Nils Reiter, and Stan Szpakowicz, 65–69. Gyeongju, Republic of Korea: International Conference on Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2022.latechclfl-1.8.
Strauch, Rebecca, and Nils B. Weidmann. 2022. “Protest and Digital Adaptation.” Research & Politics 9 (2). https://doi.org/10/gt56bh.