scholarly journals Human Rights are (Increasingly) Plural: Learning the Changing Taxonomy of Human Rights from Large-scale Text Reveals Information Effects

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 888-910
Author(s):  
BAEKKWAN PARK ◽  
KEVIN GREENE ◽  
MICHAEL COLARESI
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Automated System ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
The Us ◽  
Supervised Learning Algorithms ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Over Time

This manuscript helps to resolve the ongoing debate concerning the effect of information communication technology on human rights monitoring. We reconceptualize human rights as a taxonomy of nested rights that are judged in textual reports and argue that the increasing density of available information should manifest in deeper taxonomies of human rights. With a new automated system, using supervised learning algorithms, we are able to extract the implicit taxonomies of rights that were judged in texts by the US State Department, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch over time. Our analysis provides new, clear evidence of change in the structure of these taxonomies as well as in the attention to specific rights and the sharpness of distinctions between rights. Our findings bridge the natural language processing and human rights communities and allow a deeper understanding of how changes in technology have affected the recording of human rights over time.

scholarly journals Analysis of 220 Years of Floodplain Population Dynamics in the US at Different Spatial Scales

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Firoza Akhter ◽  
Maurizio Mazzoleni ◽  
Luigia Brandimarte
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
The Us ◽  
Over Time

In this study, we explore the long-term trends of floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales in the contiguous United States (U.S.). We exploit different types of datasets from 1790–2010—i.e., decadal spatial distribution for the population density in the US, global floodplains dataset, large-scale data of flood occurrence and damage, and structural and nonstructural flood protection measures for the US. At the national level, we found that the population initially settled down within the floodplains and then spread across its territory over time. At the state level, we observed that flood damages and national protection measures might have contributed to a learning effect, which in turn, shaped the floodplain population dynamics over time. Finally, at the county level, other socio-economic factors such as local flood insurances, economic activities, and socio-political context may predominantly influence the dynamics. Our study shows that different influencing factors affect floodplain population dynamics at different spatial scales. These facts are crucial for a reliable development and implementation of flood risk management planning.

Respect for Human Rights has Improved Over Time: Modeling the Changing Standard of Accountability

2014 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER J. FARISS
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Measurement Model ◽  
Systematic Change ◽  
Political Repression ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Time Modeling ◽  
Convention Against Torture ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

According to indicators of political repression currently used by scholars, human rights practices have not improved over the past 35 years, despite the spread of human rights norms, better monitoring, and the increasing prevalence of electoral democracy. I argue that this empirical pattern is not an indication of stagnating human rights practices. Instead, it reflects a systematic change in the way monitors, like Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department, encounter and interpret information about abuses. The standard of accountability used to assess state behaviors becomes more stringent as monitors look harder for abuse, look in more places for abuse, and classify more acts as abuse. In this article, I present a new, theoretically informed measurement model, which generates unbiased estimates of repression using existing data. I then show that respect for human rights has improved over time and that the relationship between human rights respect and ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture is positive, which contradicts findings from existing research.

(æ)fter the storm: An Examination of the short-a system in Greater New Orleans

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-131
Author(s):  
Katie Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Demographic Changes ◽  
Linguistic Description ◽  
Split Systems ◽  
The Us ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis study examines the short-a system in Greater New Orleans (GNO) following the demographic changes and large-scale displacement that occurred after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I provide a linguistic description of the short-a systems of 57 residents of the GNO suburb of Chalmette, half of whom relocated after the storm, and half of whom returned to their pre-Katrina homes. While many speakers demonstrate robust split systems, analysis demonstrates a shift over time toward the nasal system common throughout much of the US. Whether participants returned or relocated was not a significant predictor of short-a system; however, speakers most oriented to places outside of Chalmette may have led the change in progress, pointing to the importance of considering place orientation in contexts of speaker mobility. This study establishes that adoption of the nasal system is well underway in GNO, generating further questions about what New Orleans English will sound like as post-Katrina changes continue to develop.

scholarly journals Machine Learning Human Rights and Wrongs: How the Successes and Failures of Supervised Learning Algorithms Can Inform the Debate About Information Effects

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin T. Greene ◽  
Baekkwan Park ◽  
Michael Colaresi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supervised Learning ◽  
Data Generation ◽  
Learning Problem ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Supervised Learning Algorithms ◽  
Constant Mapping ◽  
Textual Features ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
Over Time

There is an ongoing debate about whether human rights standards have changed over the last 30 years. The evidence for or against this shift relies upon indicators created by human coders reading the texts of human rights reports. To help resolve this debate, we suggest translating the question of changing standards into a supervised learning problem. From this perspective, the application of consistent standards over time implies a time-constant mapping from the textual features in reports to the human coded scores. Alternatively, if the meaning of abuses have evolved over time, then the same textual features will be labeled with different numerical scores at distinct times. Of course, while the mapping from natural language to numerical human rights score is a highly complicated function, we show that these two distinct data generation processes imply divergent overall patterns of accuracy when we train a wide variety of algorithms on older versus newer sets of observations to learn how to automatically label texts with scores. Our results are consistent with the expectation that standards of human rights have changed over time.

A Genealogy of Community Consultation

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-36
Author(s):  
Shareen Hertel
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Damage Control ◽  
Community Consultation ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Third ◽  
Business And Human Rights ◽  
Over Time

This chapter offers an historical overview of poor peoples’ involvement with public and private policymaking that has shaped the business and human rights arena over four decades. The chapter reveals the continuity of constraints on poor peoples’ involvement in policymaking and corresponding limits on their ability to fully claim their economic rights. It outlines three corresponding “eras” in community consultation and draws on primary and secondary sources to trace the evolution of poor peoples’ involvement with state and corporate actors over time through each. The first era, the 1970s–1980s, was characterized by participation as damage control in the wake of large-scale industrial disasters. The second era, the 1990s, was characterized by participation as testimonial with the rise of the 24/7 news cycle and increased attention to sweatshop conditions in global supply chains and corresponding worker testimony. The third era, the 2000s, is characterized by participation as a vehicle for empowerment through the United Nations Principles on Business and Human Rights (colloquially known as the Ruggie Principles).

TO THE QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR TORTURE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
ASTEMIR ZHURTOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Life ◽  
International Standards ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Russian Federation

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.

Palestine Unbound

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 130-134
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Task Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
The Us ◽  
Intention To Move ◽  
Arab Israeli Conflict ◽  
The U.S

This section, updated regularly on the blog Palestine Square, covers popular conversations related to the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict during the quarter 16 November 2017 to 15 February 2018: #JerusalemIstheCapitalofPalestine went viral after U.S. president Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced his intention to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. The arrest of Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi for slapping an Israeli soldier also prompted a viral campaign under the hashtag #FreeAhed. A smaller campaign protested the exclusion of Palestinian human rights from the agenda of the annual Creating Change conference organized by the US-based National LGBTQ Task Force in Washington. And, UNRWA publicized its emergency funding appeal, following the decision of the United States to slash funding to the organization, with the hashtag #DignityIsPriceless.

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