Attribution Theory and Arab Images of the Gulf War

Matt worked with Daniel Heradstveit, the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the University of Bergen, to conduct an in-depth interview study of Arab elites in the wake of the Gulf War, research that only partially supports a crucial finding of research on actor-observer differences in social attribution. The results of the interview study suggest the importance of distinguishing, in applications of attribution theory, between complex political situations and simple laboratory settings, the perspectives of actors versus observers, and cultural differences in discursive practices. This research was published in Political Psychology, Volume 17, Number 2 (June 1996), pp. 271-292 .

The Limited Test-Ban Agreement: Emergence of New Knowledge Structures in International Negotiation

Matt collaborated in this research with Victor M. Sergeev and Pavel Parshin to analyze cognitive maps constructed from exchanges between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev on the test-ban negotiations. A comparison of the negotiations over time reveals the emergence of new knowledge structures that were hypothesized to facilitate the 1963 agreement on nuclear testing. To complete this research, Matt and his Russian colleagues had to develop a framework for investigating the ontological pre-understandings that lie behind political texts and develop new coding rules, called "processual coding," to code the holistic views that lie behind many Soviet texts. This research was published in International Studies Quarterly, Volume 41, June 1997, pp. 215-240.

Learning Through Digital Technology: Text Chat, Video-Conferencing, and Hypertext

As more courses go "on-line," there is an increasing recognition for the need to push beyond the mere Webification of course materials. In many cases, the robust capabilities of Web-based course instruction have thus far been largely underutilized. In this paper Matt and Jeff evaluate attempts to promote graduate teaching using resources that capture the interactivity and de-centering properties of the World Wide Web. Specifically, they examine the effectiveness of combining Web-based text chat and hypertext authoring with video-conferencing to create a new learning environment where students in the United States collaborate with their colleagues abroad to address current policy issues. Using written and oral evaluations, they reveal the successes and failures of creating a new learning "environment" from the faculty and students' point of view. By taking a look ahead to the future, their research presents some examples of how today's technology can be used to meet the promises of tomorrow's educational settings.

The Disruptive and Transformative Potential of Hypertext in the Classroom: Implications for Active Learning

While there has been some discussion about how the hypertext will change teaching, the disruptive and transformative potential of hypertext has not been systematically explored. This paper will focus on the unique properties of hypertext and hypermedia--connectivity, non-linearity, de-authoring, and virtual presence--to show how hypertext has an enormous potential for improving teaching and learning (Snyder, 1996). For example, the use of hypertext in interactive Web-based instruction (WBI) provides opportunities for learners to make connections among diverse kinds of materials, from the academic-theoretical to the everyday world of political activity. By changing learning from a teacher-centered to a student-authored activity, hypertext allows for the creation of new learning environments in which active "discovery learning" may flourish in the context of global collaboration.

To illustrate some of these ideas in action the paper reports an experiment using MidasWeb, a Web-based environment for the organization, storage, and retrieval of hypertext documents and other objects. In the MidasWeb environment, Web site collaborators develop their own classification framework for organizing documents, enter information about the documents into forms, and then download the documents.

The paper concludes by discussing obstacles to the implementation of systems like OPEN in the transitional societies of Eastern Europe and Russia. One Bulgarian city, such as Vidin, was selected as an example of both the potential of and obstacles to Internet applications like OPEN, for promoting efficiency, transparency, trust, and political participation.

The Psychology of Corruption in Azerbaijan and Iran

The CCDL PROJECT: Learning Across Borders in a Networked Culture

Paper (MSWord)

The "Axis of Evil" Metaphor and the Restructuring of Iranian Views Toward the US

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This paper, which was co-authored with Daniel Heradstveit, was published in Vaseteh, Journal of the European Society for Iranian Studies, Volume 1, Number 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 89-105.

The article focuses on how the Axis of Evil metaphor restructured the way Iranians viewed the United States.  It is based on a series of interviews conducted in Iran in March–April 2002 with 18 members of the Iranian political elite, who may currently be considered part of the political opposition, as well as interviews conducted in April 2000 in which a total of 14 respondents from the Iranian opposition.

Metaphors are tied to cultural contexts, what can be an effective rhetorical instrument in one culture may not convey meaning in another. Due to a quite different Iranian experience of the Second World War, none of our respondents reacted to the word “Axis” at all. The term “evil,” on the other hand, is not specifically Western and so functions as intended in both American and Iranian cultural contexts. We can argue that “evil” carries even stronger negative connotations in Iran than in the United States, even though the Americans are a far more religious nation than most European countries. Some respondents seemed rather to accept the validity of a list of “evil” states, but thought that Iran should not be on it, c.f., the several who stressed the difference between Iran and for example North Korea. Their surprise was not at the verbal aspects of the slogan but at the strange company Iran was made to keep. Although the respondents emphasised the startling irrationality of tarring Teheran with the same brush as Pyongyang, they did not explicitly attribute this irrationality to American religiosity. The nearest we come to this is the respondent who thought Bush to be like a "Baptist preacher from the boondocks." It is, then, the Realpolitik aspects of the “Axis of Evil” that bothered the Iranian respondents the most. The irrationality of the “Axis of Evil” was seen to a greater degree in terms of the dynamics of internal American politics, both the usual Washington infighting and the wider constituency of the American public. Many respondents saw the slogan as a consequence of the dominance of extreme right-wingers, hawks and Cold Warriors, who are still living in a bipolar world – not the United States versus the Soviet Union, but the United States versus assorted Black Hats, who are all in league with one another. In this way the rhetoric of the “Axis of Evil” is seen as illustrating a symbolic conflict between the United States and Iran that is not related to any real conflict of interests.

This paper focuses on how leaders in Japan, Russia, and Western countries talk about the “war on terrorism.” The paper discusses the difficulties of defining “terrorism,” because, unlike Marxism or capitalism, “terrorism” is not an ideology.  Instead the term may be used to designate actions that are used by members of non-governmental organizations against civilian targets.  In the case of the “war on terrorism,” the signifier, “terrorism,” is used widely.  However, the signified, the perpetrators and what they do, are quite different.   Because the designation of the signified depends upon the speaker, the concept of terrorism seems to be subjective and fluid.  The signified switches radically both by context and over time, while the only aspect that is stable is the signifier, “terrorism.”  The paper goes on to analyze the “war on terrorism” as an ontological metaphor.  The paper concludes by arguing that although figures of speech contribute to the cognitive dimension of meaning by helping us to recognize the equivalence to which we are committed and suggesting new equivalences, metaphors like the “war on terrorism” raise problems and do little to increase our understanding.  Considering different cultural codes and world views, this type of metaphor is highly counterproductive for communication on the global level.