“In recent years, computational research methods, digital trace data, and online human interactions have contributed to the emergence of new technology-oriented sub-fields within International Relations (IR). Although cybersecurity scholarship had an initial promise to be the primus inter pares among these emerging fields, the main thrust of this new methodological innovation came through the ‘digital conflict studies’ sub-field. By integrating Internet and social media research tools and questions into its core topics of sub-national violence, terrorism, and radical mobilization, digital conflict studies has recently succeeded in addressing some of the data validity and methodology problems faced by cybersecurity scholarship. This article begins by briefly reviewing some of the persistent data and method-oriented hurdles faced by cybersecurity scholarship. Then, it moves on to a more detailed account of how digital conflict studies have been addressing some of these deadlocks by focusing individually on the literature on onset, mobilization, targeting, intensity/ duration, and termination phases of conflicts. Ultimately, the article concludes with the suggestion that cybersecurity scholarship can move past its own deadlocks by building more granular and dedicated research datasets, and also by establishing mechanisms to share event data with the scientific community.”
