Replication Data for: Click, click boom: Using Wikipedia data to predict changes in battle-related deaths

Data and methods development are key to improve our ability to forecast conflict. Relatively recent data sources such as mobile phone and social media data or images have received widespread attention in conflict research. Oftentimes these do not cover substantial parts of the globe or they are difficult to obtain and manipulate, which makes regular updating challenging. The sometimes vast amounts of data can also be computationally and financially costly. The data source we propose instead is cheap, readily and openly available, and updated in real time, and it provides global coverage: Wikipedia. We argue that the number of country page views can be considered a measure of interest or salience, whereas the number of page changes can be considered a measure of controversy between competing political views. We expect these predictors to be particularly successful in capturing tensions before a conflict escalates. We test our argument by predicting changes in battle-related deaths in Africa on the country-month level. We find evidence that country page views do increase predictive performance while page changes do not. Contrary to our expectation, our model seems to capture long-term trends better than sharp short-term changes.