How Peace Saves Lives? Evidence from Colombia

The victimization of civilians and combatants during internal conflicts causes large and persistent socioeconomic costs. Moreover, it is not clear whether peace negotiations can significantly reduce this burden, as some sources of harm persist well after conflicts end. This is the case of antipersonnel landmines, which are hidden underground and remain active for decades. Looking at the recent experience of Colombia, and using a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, we study the conditions under which peace agreements reduce landmine blasts and victimization. Our findings point to the importance of post-conflict information sharing and comprehensive humanitarian mine clearance campaigns.

Idiulūjiyyah wasāʼil al-iʽlām al-jamāhīriyyah al-Indūnisiyyah ʽibar al-internet fi naql akhbār aş-şirāʽ as-siyāsī fī asy-syarq al-awsaţ

This study aims to explore the forms of information reproduction in online mass media, with specific issues on Middle East conflicts. The present study adopts a qualitative descriptive model. The data were collected from the news reports on the Syrian conflicts by some leading online news platforms such as Republika, Kompas and Tempo. The data were taken from January to October 2018 and were analyzed using the qualitative analysis stages of the Miles and Huberman model. The research findings indicate that each mass media has differences in reproducing Middle East conflict information, in terms of their data source and point of view of news reporting. Republika tends to take the opposition's point of view to the Syrian government so that it puts the United States and its allies as its main subject. On the contrary, Kompas departed from the point of view of sympathy for the Syrian government and its allies, jeopardizing the United States and its allies in reporting. The third media, Tempo, takes the point of view of narrating events chronologically and focuses a lot on humanitarian issues in the news they deliver.

Digital Public Sphere and Palestine-Israel conflict: A Conceptual Analysis of News Coverage

The news coverage of conflicts has transformed with the introduction of digital media. The available literature on media coverage of Palestine-Israel conflict is mainly focused on traditional news coverage or social media dimension of the conflict information. There exists a literature gap on social media coverage of Palestine-Israel conflict by the traditional news organizations. This study explores the changing pattern of traditional media’s coverage of the longstanding conflict in the wake of new communication technologies through appraisal of the existing literature. The analysis revealed that the traditional news organizations have adopted social networking platforms as a business model to cover Palestine-Israel conflict. It was found that the traditional news outlets use the new media because it is cost-effective and have instantaneous outreach to maximum number of netizens. The new tools of communication offer multimedia platforms where conflict-related text, videos and images can be posted simultaneously. The study proposes to conduct future research on media-conflict relationship by focusing the use of new communication tools by the traditional media.

Conflict processing networks: A directional analysis of stimulus-response compatibilities using MEG

The suppression of distracting information in order to focus on an actual cognitive goal is a key feature of executive functions. The use of brain imaging methods to investigate the underlying neurobiological brain activations that occur during conflict processing have demonstrated a strong involvement of the fronto-parietal attention network (FPAN). Surprisingly, the directional interconnections, their time courses and activations at different frequency bands remain to be elucidated, and thus, this constitutes the focus of this study. The shared information flow between brain areas of the FPAN is provided for frequency bands ranging from the theta to the lower gamma band (4–40 Hz). We employed an adaptation of the Simon task utilizing Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Granger causality was applied to investigate interconnections between the active brain regions, as well as their directionality. Following stimulus onset, the middle frontal precentral cortex and superior parietal cortex were significantly activated during conflict processing in a time window of between 300 to 600ms. Important differences in causality were found across frequency bands between processing of conflicting stimuli in the left as compared to the right visual hemifield. The exchange of information from and to the FPAN was most prominent in the beta band. Moreover, the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula represented key areas for conflict monitoring, either by receiving input from other areas of the FPAN or by generating output themselves. This indicates that the salience network is at least partly involved in processing conflict information. The present study provides detailed insights into the underlying neural mechanisms of the FPAN, especially regarding its temporal characteristics and directional interconnections.

Effects of Cerebellar tDCS on Inhibitory Control: Evidence from a Go/NoGo Task

Response inhibition as an executive function refers to the ability to suppress inappropriate but prepotent responses. Several brain regions have been implicated in the process underlying inhibitory control, including the cerebellum. The aim of the present study was to explore the role of the cerebellum in executive functioning, particularly in response inhibition. For this purpose, we transitorily inhibited cerebellar activity by means of cathodal tDCS and studied the effects of this inhibition on ERP components elicited during a Go/NoGo task in healthy subjects. Sixteen healthy subjects underwent a Go/NoGo task prior to and after cathodal and sham cerebellar tDCS in separate sessions. A reduction in N2-NoGo amplitude and a prolongation in N2-NoGo latency emerged after cathodal tDCS whereas no differences were detected after sham stimulation. Moreover, commission errors in NoGo trials were significantly higher after cathodal tDCS than at the basal evaluation. No differences emerged between performances in Go trials and those after sham stimulation. These data indicate that cerebellar inhibition following cathodal stimulation alters the ability to allocate attentional resources to stimuli containing conflict information and the inhibitory control. The cerebellum may regulate the attentional mechanisms of stimulus orientation and inhibitory control both directly, by making predictions of errors or behaviors related to errors, and indirectly, by controlling the functioning of the cerebral cortical areas involved in the perception of conflict signals and of the basal ganglia involved in the inhibitory control of movement.

Informative Combat of the Russian Hybrid War

The objective of this paper is to analyze the control system that the media offered to Russian disinformation campaigns in a supposed context of hybrid warfare. The exposure of the news offered by the main media channels allows the analysis of the concept of hybrid warfare to be concentrated and its comparison with the traditional strategic conception, in order to determine if the activities in question can be classified in this type of conflict. Information warfare and related components such as cyber warfare, electronic warfare and more, are becoming increasingly complex and can be used both defensively and offensively in the current security context offered by the national media.

Different cognitive mechanisms explain how cognitive abilities and thinking styles contribute to conflict resolution in reasoning

Recent results have challenged the widespread assumption of dual process models of belief bias that sound reasoning relies on slow, careful reflection, whereas biased reasoning is based on fast intuition. Instead, parallel process models of reasoning suggest that rule- and belief-based problem features are processed in parallel and that reasoning problems that elicit a conflict between rule- and belief-based problem features may also elicit more than one Type 1 response. This theoretical development has important implications for individual-differences research on reasoning, because rule-based responses by certain individuals may reflect that these individuals were either more likely to give a rule-based default response or that they successfully inhibited and overrode a belief-based default response. In two studies, we used the diffusion model to describe decision making during transitive reasoning and related model parameters to individual differences in cognitive abilities and thinking styles. We found that individuals with greater need for cognition showed a smaller decrease in drift rates when confronted with a conflict between rule- and belief-based problem features under logical validity instructions, which suggests that a greater disposition to engage in reflective thinking facilitated the inhibition and successful override of Type 1 responses. More intelligent individuals, however, showed a greater decrease in drift rates when confronted with a conflict between rule- and belief-based problem features under belief instructions, which suggests that their quickly generated logical response interfered with their ability to evaluate lower-level intrinsic problem features. Taken together, this double dissociation suggests that cognitive abilities and thinking styles affect the processing of conflict information through different mechanisms and at different stages of information-processing: Greater cognitive abilities facilitate the efficient creation of decoupled problem representations, whereas a greater disposition to engage in critical thinking facilitates the successful detection and override of Type 1 responses.

Conflict and Fake Information in American Political Discourse

The research article represents the notion and term “information warfare” taking into consideration numerous scientific schools and developed interpretations with their further classification. The authors also give their own definition of the notion. The adjective use relevance (“false”) in the Russian language information context is linguistically justified unlike the English language context reflecting the notions “false” and “fake” as suitable ones for the language and speech usage. The notion “conflict information” is introduced as a communicative unit with a high pragmatic potential in the spheres of information and political communication. The notions “fake” and “deep fake” are compared. The pragmatic communicative potential of fake information is clarified and developed. The notions and terms diversity based on “fake information”, “fake news” is pointed out within the research article. The authors’ classification of information fakes with distinguishing the corresponding categories and their communicative analysis is provided. The notion “alternative fact” is analyzed from the communicative point of view and contrastive approach usage. Different means of fake information identification are distinguished.