Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO) is a framework for coding event data (typically used for events that merit news coverage, and generally applied to the study of political news and violence).
It is a more recent alternative to the
WEIS coding system developed by
Charles A. McClelland and the
Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB) coding system developed by
Edward Azar.
History
Work on CAMEO began in 2000 at the
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...
with financial support from the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
. The first paper on the subject, by Deborah J. Gerner was written for the March 2002 Annual Meeting of the
International Studies Association
The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Connecticut in Storrs sin ...
in
.
In the paper, the authors noted that they worked on creating the new CAMEO system rather than continue using the existing WEIS coding system for a combination of reasons, including previously known weaknesses of WEIS and some difficulties that emerge when trying to automate the WEIS coding process. The coding software used for CAMEO, as well as for the automated WEIS implementation that CAMEO was compared with, was the
Textual Analysis by Augmeted Replacement Instructions
In literary theory, textuality comprises all of the attributes that distinguish the communicative content under analysis as an object of study. It is associated with structuralism and post-structuralism.
Explanation
Textuality is not just ab ...
(TABARI) software developed by co-author
Philip A. Schrodt Philip Andrew "Phil" Schrodt (born July 24, 1951) is a political scientist known for his work in automated data and event coding for political news. On August 1, 2013, he announced that he was leaving his job as professor at Pennsylvania State Unive ...
in 2000, and was in turn based on the
Kansas Event Data System
Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...
(KEDS) developed in 1994.
[
The CAMEO manual describes the following key stages of the history of work on the project:
* Initial development of verb and actor ontology: (2000-2003): Deborah J. Gerner, Omur Yilmaz, Philip A. Schrodt
* Refinements of actor ontology (2004-2007): Dennis Hermrick, Baris Kesgin, Peter Picucci, Joseph Pull, Almas Sayeed, Sarah Stacey
* Organized Religion (2009-2011): Matthias Heilke
* Ethnic Groups (2011): Jay Yonamine, Benjamin Bagozzi
]
Alternatives
One of the alternatives to CAMEO is Integrated Data for Events Analysis
Integration may refer to:
Biology
*Multisensory integration
*Path integration
* Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome
*DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...
(IDEA), an outgrowth of work by the PANDA project. Predecessors to CAMEO include the World Interaction/Event Survey
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
(WEIS) coding system by Charles A. McClelland and the Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB) by Edward Azar.[
Some key differences between CAMEO and IDEA are:][
* IDEA maintains backward compatibility with WEIS whereas CAMEO does not.
* CAMEO is focused on inter-state behavior, whereas IDEA encompasses a substantially broader range of behavior.
* The tertiary categories for IDEA are generally oriented towards the study of citizen direct action (for example strikes and protests), whereas the categories in CAMEO are oriented towards the study of third-party mediation in international and inter-ethnic conflict.
]
Reception
Academic reception
CAMEO has been the subject of a number of academic papers comparing it with other coding frameworks.
Datasets that use CAMEO coding
* Integrated Conflict Early Warning System The Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS) combines a database of political events and a system using these to provide conflict early warnings. It is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States. The databa ...
(ICEWS)Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone The GDELT Project, or Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone, created by Kalev Leetaru of Yahoo! and Georgetown University, along with Philip Schrodt and others, describes itself as "an initiative to construct a catalog of human societal-sca ...
(GDELT)
References
{{reflist
External links
CAMEO Event Data Codebook
(describes CAMEO and its history, and links to main papers and versions of the codebook)
Data coding framework