Project Outline: Network Analysis of Propaganda during the Nepalese Civil War
Network Analysis of Propaganda during Nepalese Civil War: A mathematical approach to understand communication strategies
Supervisor: Dr. Peter Levine, Department of Political Science, Tufts University
Politics affects human lives on a daily basis. In context of wars and changing political systems, communication plays a huge role to shape human views towards a certain ideology. I have felt the need to study such strategies closely in context of Nepal to bridge the gap between mathematical models and social science learning while also understanding the historical impact of the war.
Project Background:
My research would represent the Nepalese Civil War as an information network. I will map misinformation and propaganda spread across different cultural, social and economic parameters. I plan to test the public's response to propaganda and misinformation of the time by combining sentiment analysis and frequency-based models to compare the responses in neutral political texts and propaganda-infused texts.
Methodology:
A major part of the project is collection of archives, and for the first half of my summer, I will be focusing on collecting such archives by visiting Nepal-based archives and accessing digital websites that house information about Nepalese Civil War. This process also involves a lot of investigation to find the materials which haven't been publicized. After the process of information collection, we will be using network analysis to connect ideas and people. The goal is to understand how different people, places, and events were connected during the conflict.
After having gathered data from various archives, we would be focusing on key actors, events, and locations involved in the conflict. Each person or group will be treated as a node, and connections between them—such as collaboration, confrontation, or shared involvement in an event—would be represented as edges. We will clean and organize the data to avoid duplication and map the network and calculate centrality measures, with a goal to identify influential figures and patterns of interaction over time.
Goal:
The analysis thus obtained might be a useful way to understand how the Maoist and government movements operated and evolved through its connections during the war.
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I am Sampada Wagle, a mathematics major from Tufts University, all the way from Nepal. My interests span in topology and quantum information science. However, as I have lived throughout these years, I feel a strong sense of civic responsibility of mine, no matter what I choose to study, to understand the political landscape of my country and the whole world in general. I believe that to not care about politics is a privilege--a privilege only few enjoy, thus, I envision to use my knowledge in Math to aid different ways of how youth view politics and quantize qualitative data to best represent political leanings, ideologies and other metrics.
Coming from Kathmandu, a place where political unrest and daily turmoil and riots emerged with a little to no streamlined understanding and advocacy from youth, I want to use the platform I have to freely examine and communicate policies and history from a mathematical standpoint--something I deeply adore! Outside of academic life, I enjoy reading Camus, wandering through scenic routes with a cup of coffee, and writing existential literature that reflects my ongoing attempts to understand solitude, identity, meaning and human existence. If you'd like to explore this side of me, feel free to visit my blog: Oblivion!
I love and adore many little things that wouldn't be possible to list here, but I deeply value connections and conversations where I can know about different stories, experiences and lives of people, expanding what humanity means to me, and learning something new about the world and myself every day!
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