Food and water insecurity as causes of social unrest

Evidence from geolocated Twitter data

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3917570
AutoresOre Koren (0000-0001-9011-1510, Indiana University Bloomington, autor correspondente), Benjamin E Bagozzi (0000-0002-6233-6453, University of Delaware), Thomas S Benson (University of Delaware), Thomas Benson (0000-0003-2103-6355, University of Delaware)
Ano2021
Volume58
Fascículo1
Páginas67-82
Data de publicação2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Peace Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022343320975091
OpenAlexW3120885360
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas28
Referências citadas44

Research often fails to account for the specific pathways by which climatic factors can cause social unrest. One challenge lies in understanding the distinct effects of food insecurity and water insecurity - which we term 'staple insecurities' - while accounting for their interrelated nature, especially at high-resolution spatio-temporal scales. To unpack these dynamics, we leverage geolocated Twitter data across urban areas in Kenya and deploy a supervised machine learning approach to separately identify geolocated tweets concerning food and water insecurity, in both English and Swahili. The data are then aggregated to create daily measures of food and water insecurity for standardized grid-cells to examine how perceived food insecurity moderates and/or reinforces perceived water insecurity's impacts on social unrest, and vice versa. Our findings suggest that food and water insecurities' respective effects should be interpreted as mutually reinforcing - in compelling citizens to take to the streets - rather than as independent. Those concerned with climate change's impact on conflict should hence endeavor to jointly account for both forms of insecurity, and their interactive effects

Food insecurity · Food security · Geography · Leverage (statistics) · Political science · Social media · Social unrest · Unrest · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Computer Science · Disaster Management and Resilience · Psychology · Transboundary Water Resource Management