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Political Communication Lab
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A lab that explores causal relationships between politics and society through historical events.
AboutAbout the lab
At the frontier of causal inference, solving society's puzzles
The Political Communication Lab studies causal relationships among politics, the economy, and society across the social sciences.
To measure the effects of policies and social phenomena, the lab focuses on quasi-experimental causal inference using observational data.
A recent focus is "historical political economy," which treats historical events as natural experiments.
The lab welcomes not only students majoring in political science but also those interested in causal inference, policy evaluation, local communities, or historical context.
Key terms
- Causal inference
- A way of thinking and a set of methods for determining from data whether a policy or event produced an outcome
- Quasi-experiment
- A method that, when experiments are not possible, looks for situations that allow near-experimental comparisons and measures effects from observational data
- Natural experiment
- A method that analyzes events that occurred without human intent, such as historical events, as if they were experiments
- Social capital
- The power of ties and trust among people in a community to support society
ResearchResearch themes
The lab uses quasi-experimental causal inference with observational data to quantitatively measure the effects of policies and social phenomena. Its research themes are wide-ranging, including social ties in local communities, electoral systems, and political participation.
*Illustrative imageTurning History into Natural Experiments
The lab treats historical events as natural experiments to identify causal relationships in politics and the economy. Even factors that are hard to measure, such as culture and historical institutions, are analyzed by digitizing historical records and geographic information.
*Illustrative imageThe Tokyo Air Raids and Community Ties
Treating the Tokyo air raids of World War II as a natural experiment in the destruction of social capital, the lab examined their effects on present-day neighborhood association membership rates and socioeconomic indicators. It analyzes the damage in fine detail using historical aerial photographs.
*Illustrative imageVoting Behavior Seen Through Location Data
The lab detects voters' voting behavior from mobile phone location data and analyzes the relationship between distance to polling places and turnout. The research combines data with political science.
MembersFaculty
- Associate ProfessorMasataka Harada
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Historical documents in the Swedish National archives” OlesiaLukaniuk (WMUA) / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Turning History into Natural Experiments: “Simon's 1888 Gothenburg map” Ludvig Simon / Public domain (cropped)
- The Tokyo Air Raids and Community Ties: “Tokyo” 米軍撮影 / Public domain (cropped)
- Voting Behavior Seen Through Location Data: “Election in Japan2016 Summer” Mr.ち
ゅらさん / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped) - Related lab (Spatial Planning Science Lab): “PANO-X GIS BASED 360 PANORAMIC AUTOMATION SYSTEM” Panoramicweb / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Cognitive Psychology and Informatics Lab): “Optical Illusion (67183712)” Dennis Sylvester Hurd / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Language Informatics Lab): “Data center infrastructure in the United States” DOE/National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Linguistic Text Analysis Lab): “Tree diagram for "How kind you are"” Brett / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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