Communication and Coordination Under Conflict

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How do civilians, combatants, and armed forces communicate and coordinate under conflict and repression? Violence, whether overt or threatened, affects the way individuals and organizations communicate publicly. The papers on this panel explore the way that these actors use public messages to coordinate, compete, and organize. At the individual level, non-combatants use social media platforms to coordinate even in the shadow of censorship and repression. At the same time, individuals self-censor in response to past violence. At the institutional level, fragmentation among armed forces in multifaceted conflicts leads actors nominally fighting on the same side to compete with one another for resources. This competition is revealed in the public messages these forces communicate through social and conventional media, and is borne out in the strategic interactions between armed forces which affect the likelihood of peace.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Civilian Behavior on Social Media During Civil War - Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, University of California - Los Angeles; Anita R. Gohdes, Hertie School

• Online Presentation of Self in Repressive Contexts: The Persian Twittersphere - Layla M Hashemi, GMU; Steven Lloyd Wilson, University of Nevada, Reno; Constanza Sanhueza Petrarca, WZB Berlin Social Science Center

• Armed Forces’ Public Relations: Competition and Differentiation - Austin Knuppe, Utah State University; Matthew Nanes, Saint Louis University

• Security Sector Fragmentation and the Duration of Peace and War - Peter White, Auburn University

Chair

• Alexandra Arons Siegel University of Coloardo Boulder

Discussants

• Alexandra Arons Siegel University of Coloardo Boulder

• Luwei Ying University of California, Los Angeles