With Thanks to Neil Bowie, Empiricism, and Data-Crunching Puppies

Seeing as how I have characterized my musings here as a "research blog," it seems appropriate that I should occasionally post information about scholarship concerning communication, politics, terrorist organizations, and the like. A man can only post so monkeys sitting at computer terminals, dogs using human instruments, or terrible puns related to either of these. So, in the interest of advocating empirical approaches to studying violent political organizations, their communicative activities, and how we can challenge them, I want to promote a research note authored by Neil G. Bowie. In this research note, Bowie summarizes sixty data sets that can assist in the quantitative analysis of issues surrounding the use of political violence. I would strongly recommend that any serious researcher of these issues read Bowie's paper and take note of which databases might be useful for pursuing specific research questions.

Here is the link to the (ungated) research note: Bowie, N. G. (2017). Terrorism events data: An inventory of databases and data sets, 1968-2017. Perspectives on Terrorism, 11(4), 50-72.

I have already started looking at many databases I had previously not known about. At first blush, it appears that this research note will be an excellent resource for my research as I move forward trying to quantitatively evaluate communicative phenomena related to political violence. At the very least, these databases will allow us to start crunching data related to political violence, much like this fellow.

Don't work too hard, though. It looks like he's having a ruff day.

I'm so sorry. I couldn't help myself.