One of the great things about being done with my book project is that I can begin blogging and writing a little more openly regarding the issues I've been tracking empirically over the past seven years, in the same way I have often weighed in publicly on political...
One of the more specious criticisms of the "stopkillerrobots" campaign is that it is using sensationalist language and imagery to whip up a climate of fear around autonomous weapons. So the argument...
A heavily attended side-event today was the Norwegian Red Cross' panel discussion "Looking Back to Look Forward: The Cluster Munitions Convention and What it Means for Limiting the Impact of Other...
The International AIDS Society conference began Sunday in DC, the first time the conference has been held in the United States since 1990 because of the now-lifted travel ban on HIV+ people coming...
So Kony 2012 has been labeled the fastest-growing viral video of all time. While it's not clear how many of those "views" included actually watching the whole video, Invisible Children has certainly made an impact. The film has been criticized and satirized for inaccuracy, narcissism and counter-productivity... though not by everyone. After a week of observing the debate, I have three thoughts. 1) The message is about the power of social media, not about Kony. I went for almost 72 hours following the Kony2012 coverage before actually finding 20 minutes to watch the film. When I did, I was...
This issue of International Studies Quarterly includes an article by Andrew Yeo on the emergence of an advocacy network against foreign military bases. Aside from the minor fact that Yeo omits reference to an important recent contribution to the literature on basing politics, I found his process-tracing of the No Bases Network fascinating. Here's the abstract:"Providing an overview of the emergence, characteristics, trajectory, and potential limitations of the transnational anti-base network, this article focuses on two broad questions relevant to transnational politics. First, what...
A while ago there was some discussion on this blog about the definition of "celebrity" activism for the purposes of empirically studying the entertainment industry's role in advocacy campaigns. A question was raised about what constitutes celebrity status, what constitutes activism, how much the two co-constitute one another in these cases.Jeff Skoll weighed in on this last week in his comments at the Global Philanthropy Forum 2008 Annual Conference in San Jose. Skoll, who founded the Skoll Foundation to create independent films on social topics, believes the definition of "celebrity" can...
Steven Spielberg has withdrawn from his role as artistic adviser to the Beijing Olympics to protest China's policy towards Darfur. Seemingly, yet another example of "celebrity activism" around human security issues. I blogged about this before. As I continue to think about the role of celebrity activism in human security campaigns, I've been pondering who actually counts as a celebrity? Performers clearly do. But what about other well-known members of the entertainment industry - writers, producers? What about well-known figures who perform public, rather than media roles? In a digital...