Raw Data for Peace and Security - The Extraction and Mining of People's Behaviour

In 2015, the United Nations Global Pulse launched an experimentation process assessing the viability of big data and artificial intelligence analysis to support peace and security. The proposition of using such analysis, and thereby creating early warning systems based on real-time monitoring, warrants a critical assessment. This thesis engages in an explanatory critique of the discursive (re-)definitions of peace and security as well as big data and artificial intelligence in the United Nations Global Pulse Lab Kampala report Experimenting with Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to Support Peace and Security. The paper follows a qualitative design and utilises critical discourse analysis as its methodology while using instrumentarian violence as a theoretical lens. The study argues that the use of big data and artificial intelligence analysis, in conjunction with data mining on social media and radio broadcasts for the purposes of early warning systems, creates and manifests social relations marked by asymmetric power and knowledge dynamics. The analysis suggests that the report’s discursive and social practices indicate a conceptualisation of peace and security rooted in the notion of social control through prediction. The study reflects on the consequences for social identities, social relations, and the social world itself and suggests potential areas for future research