Dr. Charli Carpenter and an International Team of Researchers Awarded
$647,000 from the National Science Foundation
Professor Carpenter has received a sizeable grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her project "Issue Adoption in Human Rights Advocacy Networks," which will focus on why some human rights issues are well-known and others are not considered on the international agenda. Specifically, Carpenter and her team of researchers from Canada, the Netherlands, and Pitt will focus on transnational advocacy networks in issue creation.
Carpenter's project has three goals: map human rights networks on the World Wide Web; determine which issues receive the most attention and where gaps in the policy agenda lie; and the project will conclude with a series of focus groups with individuals from human rights activist organizations, who will explore possible explanations for the different issues on and off the international agenda.
This project is not just an international collaborative effort, but an interdepartmental one as well. GSPIA Joint Appointee Dr. Stuart Shulman will head the analysis of survey data at the University of Pittsburgh's Qualitative Data Analysis Program, and GSPIA's Ford Institute for Human Security will house the project.
The University of Amsterdam's Richard Rogers visited Pitt earlier in October to conduct a training session on Issuecrawler, an online algorithm used to map online advocacy networks.
Carpenter hopes this project will contribute to an understanding of how international advocacy groups influence the global human rights agenda.
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