Civic Space Early Warning System

INSPIRES is testing how machine learning can help predict changes in civic space before they occur in select countries around the world. DevLab has created an enormous database and online tools to monitor news for events relevant to civic space and attempts by authoritarian regimes to influence civic space abroad, referred to as Resurgent Authoritarian Influence (RAI). Each month, we collect thousands of news articles posted online from international, regional, and domestic news sources. We use machine learning to read and classify each article according to 20 civic space event categories and 22 RAI event categories. Data scientists combine data on these events with high frequency economic data to forecast changes in civic space, including a ‘Civic Space Index’ that summarizes movement across many civic space events. You can learn more about this process in our Pipeline Report.