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- Creators: Rothenberg, Daniel
- Creators: Department of Information Systems
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
As online media, including social media platforms, become the primary and go-to resource for traditional communication, news and the spread of information is more present and accessible to consumers than ever before. This research focuses on analyzing Twitter data on the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War to understand the significance of social media during this period in comparison to previous conflicts. The significance of social media and political conflict will be examined through Twitter user analysis and sentiment analysis. This case study will conduct sentiment analysis on a random sample of tweets from a given dataset, followed by user analysis and classification methods. The data will explore the implications for understanding public opinion on the conflict, the strengths and limitations of Twitter as a data source, and the next steps for future research. Highlighting the implications of the research findings will allow consumers and political stakeholders to make more informed decisions in the future.
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), civil-military joint teams created by the U.S. government, are intended to assist in development and reconstruction projects throughout Afghanistan. The mission of PRTs involve locally grounded engagement linking security and community assistance as a central means of supporting the larger counterinsurgency model. Humanitarian activities as undertaken by PRTs attempt provide stability to civilians that they might otherwise turn toward an insurgent group to find. Ideally, PRTs should understand the factors that cause individual and group insurgency against a state and utilize that knowledge when attempting to address the conflict that results. This study focuses on the successes and shortcomings of the Jalalabad PRT and their implementation of a new project development model in the Nangarhar province in Afghanistan in 2006. It was successful because it directly worked to remediate the underlying causes of insurgency as proposed by the technocratic conceit, with a focus on improved water sanitation and sewage, agriculture, and basic infrastructure. It was unsuccessful because it failed to promote local ownership, the development of a community identity, or a methodology to measure the effectiveness and impact of its projects.
According to the lessons from the conflict literature, the Jalalabad PRT’s actions only partly reduced the factors that lead to individual and group defection into an insurgent group.
In actively working to incorporate the lessons from the conflict literature into the Jalalabad PRT project development model, PRTs will more aptly and successfully achieve their stated goals of providing stability, reconstruction, and security. Without addressing the potential other underlying causes of insurgency, however, U.S. PRTs are unable to produce measurable, empirical reductions to insurgency in Afghanistan.