Until Consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression Dataset

Posted: 7 Jan 2022 Last revised: 18 Jan 2024

Date Written: September 2, 2020

Abstract

Extant scholarship has until now relied on informal-theoretic, case study, and interpretative methods to assess patterns of norm development in cyberspace. Ideally, these accounts would be complemented with more systematic crossnational and longitudinal empirical evidence. To address this gap, this article introduces the International Cyber Expression (ICE) Dataset. The dataset includes a corpus of more than 35,000 official expressions of view by state actors regarding the international politics of cyberspace. The article describes the sources of this data and demonstrates the dataset’s usefulness, with an appendix containing an exploratory analysis of norm convergence. Future research can leverage the dataset to empirically test questions of theory and policy. For example, the dataset can be used to study how foundational theories of norm diffusion apply to cyberspace. It can also be paired with existing cyber conflict datasets to study the conditions under which state practice influences cyber discourse, and vice versa.

Keywords: cyber, text analysis, international law, GGE, UNGGE

Suggested Citation

Canfil, Justin Key, Until Consensus: Introducing the International Cyber Expression Dataset (September 2, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3731163 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3731163

Justin Key Canfil (Contact Author)

Carnegie Mellon University ( email )

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