You will hear of skirmishes and rumors of skirmishes: Cell Communication in Proximity to Political Violence

We investigate the relationship between low-level political violence and communication patterns. Using network traffic from all Orange Côte d’Ivoire cell towers and 400 million calls from 500,000 randomly sampled cell phone subscribers, we show that in the days preceding small violent incidents, call volumes increase, driven by more active subscribers. Average call length decreases and calls become more local. This suggests that the tension preceding political violence is widely dispersed among members of the local population. These changes are consistent with people calling close friends and family at a higher rate. These unique communication patterns attenuate as we increase distance from the violence and strengthens as we exclude nonfatal events. We further show that the signature for violence is significantly different than those of football matches and festivals. ∗[email protected] †[email protected] ‡[email protected]