A Data Science - Centered Approach to Studying International Relations and Foreign Policies

There is a growing consensus around the world that big data and data science will fundamentally change many different fields. This also applies to the study of international affairs to the extent that neither policymakers nor scholars would be able to escape its profound implications. International politics has already experienced technology-driven change with the ascendance of cyberspace as an important domain of daily activity. Big Data unveils new dimensions to these changes, which political scientists and observers of international affairs are only now beginning to comprehend. It changes power distributions and thereby some basic assumptions of international relations theory [1]. Big transformations over a long duration can now be engaged and lengthy trends that political scientists are usually ill-equipped to map with traditional datasets can be investigated. This would soon cease to be limited to mere data analysis and will increasingly begin to influence international relations research and policymaking. The study is aimed at proving what was impossible two decades ago is now handy in a matter of minutes with little more than a laptop through the power of data science and big data.