Papers by Yulia Vorobyeva
Journalism
Explanations for an increase in the killing of journalists worldwide over the last quarter centur... more Explanations for an increase in the killing of journalists worldwide over the last quarter century include the dangers of war coverage and unsafe conditions in formally democratic countries. Analyzing 1812 killings of journalists from 1992 to 2016, we find that countries with hybrid political regimes mixing liberal and illiberal elements create by far the most dangerous context for journalists, while a particular spatial configuration within those countries, subnational authoritarianism, clarifies the logic of the killings. In short, the study finds that most journalists died in countries where formal democratic norms and practices at the national level encourage investigative reporting in local arenas where powerholders have incentives to violently suppress critical press coverage. On a theoretical level, the synthesis of spatial analysis, comparative politics and journalism studies opens a fruitful path for theorizing anti-press violence and journalist safety. In terms of policy, ...
SSRN Electronic Journal
Society faces a fundamental global problem of understanding which individuals are currently devel... more Society faces a fundamental global problem of understanding which individuals are currently developing strong support for some extremist entity such as ISIS (Islamic State)even if they never end up doing anything in the real world. The importance of online connectivity in developing intent has been confirmed by recent case-studies of already convicted terrorists. Here we identify dynamical patterns in the online trajectories that individuals take toward developing a high level of extremist support-specifically, for ISIS. Strong memory effects emerge among individuals whose transition is fastest, and hence may become 'out of the blue' threats in the real world. A generalization of diagrammatic expansion theory helps quantify these characteristics, including the impact of changes in geographical location, and can facilitate prediction of future risks. By quantifying the trajectories that individuals follow on their journey toward expressing high levels of pro-ISIS support-irrespective of whether they then carry out a real-world attack or not-our findings can help move safety debates beyond reliance on static watch-list identifiers such as ethnic background or immigration status, and/or post-fact interviews with already-convicted individuals. Given the broad commonality of social media platforms, our results likely apply quite generally: for example, even on Telegram where (like Twitter) there is no built-in group feature as in our study, individuals tend to collectively build and pass through so-called super-group accounts.
SSRN Electronic Journal
How self-organized networks develop, mature and degenerate is a key question for sociotechnical 1... more How self-organized networks develop, mature and degenerate is a key question for sociotechnical 1-4 , cyber-physical 5-18 and biological systems 19-33 with potential applications from tackling violent extremism 34-41 through to neurological diseases 19,20. So far, it has proved impossible to measure the continuous-time evolution of any in vivo organism network from birth to death 6,19,20,22. Here we provide such a study which crosses all organizational and temporal scales, from individual components (~()) through to the mesoscopic (~() and entire system scale (~()). These continuous-time data reveal a lifespan driven by punctuated, real-time co-evolution of the structural and functional networks. Aging sees these structural and functional networks gradually diverge in terms of their small-worldness and eventually their connectivity. Dying emerges as an extended process associated with the formation of large but disjoint functional sub-networks together with an increasingly detached core. Our mathematical model quantifies the very different impacts that interventions will have on the overall lifetime, period of initial growth, peak of potency, and duration of old age, depending on when and how they are administered. In addition to their direct relevance to online extremism, our findings offer fresh insight into aging in any network system of comparable complexity for which extensive in vivo data is not yet available 6,7,19,20,30,31. It may be a long time before the dynamical evolution of any biological network is known at every instance of an organism's lifetime. Yet new insight is urgently needed for more incisive treatments against diseases such as Alzheimer's 19,20. Likewise, in the field of
Online support for adversarial groups such as Islamic State (ISIS) can turn local into global thr... more Online support for adversarial groups such as Islamic State (ISIS) can turn local into global threats and attract new recruits and funding. Johnson et al. analyzed data collected on ISIS-related websites involving 108,086 individual followers between 1 January 1 and 31 August 2015. They developed a statistical model aimed at identifying behavioral patterns among online supporters of ISIS and used this information to predict the onset of major violent events. Sudden escalation in the number of ISIS-supporting ad hoc web groups (“aggregates”) preceded the onset of violence in a way that would not have been detected by looking at social media references to ISIS alone. The model suggests how the development and evolution of such aggregates can be blocked.
Support for an extremist entity such as Islamic State (ISIS) somehow manages to survive globally ... more Support for an extremist entity such as Islamic State (ISIS) somehow manages to survive globally online despite considerable external pressure and may ultimately inspire acts by individuals having no history of extremism, membership in a terrorist faction, or direct links to leadership. Examining longitudinal records of online activity, we uncovered an ecology evolving on a daily time scale that drives online support, and we provide a mathematical theory that describes it. The ecology features self-organized aggregates (ad hoc groups formed via linkage to a Facebook page or analog) that proliferate preceding the onset of recent real-world campaigns and adopt novel adaptive mechanisms to enhance their survival. One of the predictions is that development of large, potentially potent pro-ISIS
aggregates can be thwarted by targeting smaller ones.
Online support for adversarial groups such as Islamic State (ISIS) can turn local into global thr... more Online support for adversarial groups such as Islamic State (ISIS) can turn local into global threats and attract new recruits and funding. Johnson et al. analyzed data collected on ISIS-related websites involving 108,086 individual followers between 1 January 1 and 31 August 2015. They developed a statistical model aimed at identifying behavioral patterns among online supporters of ISIS and used this information to predict the onset of major violent events. Sudden escalation in the number of ISIS-supporting ad hoc web groups (“aggregates”) preceded the onset of violence in a way that would not have been detected by looking at social media references to ISIS alone. The model suggests how the development and evolution of such aggregates can be blocked.
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Papers by Yulia Vorobyeva
aggregates can be thwarted by targeting smaller ones.
aggregates can be thwarted by targeting smaller ones.