Extractive versus Generative Language Models for Political Conflict Text Classification

Abstract We review our recent ConfliBERT language model (Hu et al . 2022 [ConfliBERT: A Pre-Trained Language Model for Political Conflict and Violence]) to process political and violence-related texts. When fine-tuned, results show that ConfliBERT has superior performance in accuracy, precision, and recall over other large language models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemma 2 (9B), Meta’s Llama 3.1 (7B), and Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 (14B) within its relevant domains. It is also hundreds of times faster than these more generalist LLMs. These results are illustrated using texts from the BBC, re3d, and the Global Terrorism Database. We demonstrate that open, fine-tuned models can outperform the more general models in terms of accuracy, precision, and recall, and at a fraction of the cost.