Context matters: Improving the uses of big data for forecasting civil unrest: Emerging phenomena and big data

Open Source Indicators (OSI) such as Google Trends (GT) promise to uncover the social dynamics associated with behavior that precede episodes of civil unrest. There are myriad reasons why societies may become unstable: Our analysis does not require or inquire the underlying reasons for discontent but instead takes into account differences associated with variegated social contexts. This paper examines instances of this volatile behavior and suggests a simple model for predicting civil unrest events using GT as an open source indicator (OSI). It grounds the possibilities for prediction on the fact that social processes occur within a particular social context. As such, paying attention to the particular signals associated from each country is an important moderator for any model keen on predicting cases of extreme social behavior such as civil unrest.