Research

Engineering & Computer Science Publications

Toward Privacy-Preserving Localization and Mapping in eXtended Reality: A Privacy Threat Model (with Martina Brachmann, Utku Gülen, and Valentin Tudor), IEEE European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC) 2023

How should practitioners in the AR/VR domain prioritize the myriad threats to privacy posed by emerging technologies? This study focuses on modeling privacy threats in the eXtended Reality (XR) domain with an emphasis on generic localization and mapping processes that run on or are offloaded by widely used equipment such as XR glasses. With the help of a privacy threat assessment framework, we model privacy threats that can affect the different XR processes and equipment. In addition to the threat analysis results, we provide a brief overview of threat mitigation techniques for each threat category. This strengthens privacy in XR processes and equipment and allows for privacy-preserving localization and mapping in XR scenario.

Social Science Publications

Governance, Online: How Extremists Use Media to Gain Local Support ("Essays on Extremism and Radicalization in an Internet Age"), Doctoral Dissertation (2023)

How do extremist rebel groups gain and maintain support at the local level? My dissertation brings together over five years of social media data across four rebel organizations in the Middle East and Central Asia to show how territorial control constrains and reshapes the way that rebels use modern media to communicate their message to a more diverse group of potential followers. I introduce a novel theory of rebel media as a local support strategy that draws attention to the increasingly influential role that the changing landscape of communication technology plays in the dynamics of local support. Using state-of-the-art computational methods driven by AI-assisted text-and-video identification and classification, I find that territorial ambitions and control indeed constrains rebel media to more localized, governance-oriented messaging regardless of a group’s ideological commitments. However, this moderating turn isn’t absolute; extremist groups with substantial followings abroad turn to specialization to continue to deliver more extreme, ideologically-driven content. Thus, while the transition to territorial conquest and control may constrain even extreme rebels to more moderate appeals at the local level, it may do little to stem their influence among more ideologically-driven audiences abroad. This finding has important consequences for the way that scholars and policymakers alike address and attempt to counter the growing influence of rebel media both on and off the battlefield in an internet age.

Studying the Impact of ISIS Propaganda Campaigns (with Barbara F. Walter and Tamar Mitts), Journal of Politics 2022

Over the past decade, a large number of extremist and hate groups have turned to internet platforms to inspire mass violence. Currently, there is little reliable evidence on how such campaigns radicalize targeted audiences. We provide systematic, large-scale, micro evidence on the effect of Islamic State propaganda on social media. We use several machine learning algorithms to detect recruitment messages in online propaganda, identify their dissemination on Twitter, and quantify the reactions of exposed users. Analyzing content produced by the Islamic State between 2015 and 2016 shows that propaganda conveying the material, spiritual, and social benefits of joining ISIS increased online support for the group, while content displaying brutal violence decreased endorsement of ISIS across a wide range of videos. Only the group’s most extreme supporters reacted positively to violent propaganda.

Rebel Group Behavior

Rebel Propaganda in an Internet Age (with Barbara F. Walter), Forthcoming @ Journal of Peace Research 2024

One of the most compelling developments in civil wars is the expanding use of Internet media by combatants. However, little is known about the strategic use of propaganda in civil wars, and even less about how, when, and why combatants disseminate information on the Internet. We present a novel theoretical framework introducing three reasons why combatants might invest in Internet propaganda and the conditions under which they are more or less likely to do so. Propaganda could be used to recruit soldiers, solicit financing, or as a form of advertising in competition with rival groups. We then introduce a new dataset of online propaganda in civil war that includes every available, downloadable piece of Internet communication produced by every major rebel group in the civil war in Iraq between January 2011 and December 2015. Preliminary analysis suggests the feasibility of each of these theories. The paper closes with some illustrations and evaluations of each of these mechanisms from a review of ISIS propaganda.

Extreme Violence and Repression

Swords before Ploughshares: Extreme Repression in the Shadow of Civil War (with Dogus Aktan & Alex Stephenson), Working Paper

Why do weak leaders employ extreme repression when doing so risks the outbreak of potentially devastating civil war? Over the past three decades, scholars have expanded our understanding of repression as a multi-faceted tool of leaders facing internal threats to political survival, with many exploring the ability of autocrats to signal a commitment to punish dissidents who are uncertain of a leader’s resolve or capabilities through varying degrees of violent coercion. This study flips this mechanism on its head, focusing instead on how autocrats employ repression when they are uncertain of their own capability to sustain violent coercion in future periods. We use a formal model of repression in the shadow of popular unrest with one sided incomplete information to show that weak leaders can rationally "over-repress'' a population. Leaders may inadvertently signal their weakness by resorting to unsustainable strongman tactics and trigger extended civil conflict without any changes to the underlying distribution of power between leaders and dissidents. We illustrate this mechanism through a case study of the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian Civil War and generalize this finding to a cross case analysis of extreme repression from 1972 to the present.