discourses as measurable networks

Discourses as Measurable Networks!Introducing Connected Concept Analysis as a Mixed Methods Approach"to Big Text Data"

"Keynote at CAQDAS 2014 by Simon Lindgren""

Big text data!"Internet research "Networked publics "Digital culture "Big data "(Re)invention of methods

Connected Concept Analysis!"Systematic big text analysis "Not close reading "Not content analysis "Discourse theory + grounded theory + social network analysis "

Other methods!"Discourse analysis "Thematic analysis "Computational linguistics "Natural language processing "Semantic network analysis "Co-word analysis "Wordclouds

Methodological bricolage!"Bridging statistical and interpretive methods "Beyond triangulation (towards integration) "Methodological pragmatism (CCA: an emergent construction) "Grounded theory: sensitizing concepts, constant comparative analysis, saturation "Discourse theory: discursive formation, nodal points, articulation, chains of equivalency "Network analysis

Deconstructing and reconstructing!

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Distant reading!"

“The trouble with close reading … is that it necessarily depends on an extremely small canon … (Y)ou invest so much in individual texts only if you think that very few of them really matter. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense … (W)hat we really need is a little pact with the devil: we know how to read texts, now let's learn how not to read them. Distant reading: where distance … is a condition of knowledge: it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text: devices, themes, tropes — or genres and systems. And if, between the very small and the very large, the text itself disappears, well, it is one of those cases when one can justifiably say, Less is more. If we want to understand the system in its entirety, we must accept losing something. We always pay a price for theoretical knowledge: reality is infinitely rich; concepts are abstract, are poor. But it's precisely this 'poverty' that makes it possible to handle them, and therefore to know.” (Franco Moretti, 2013, pp. 48-49).

Hybrid reading!"Quantitative reduction Qualitative exploration and validation "Switching between close and distant reading

1 "Unit of analysis (delimitation)

2 "Semiotic units (words)

3

Stop words Text cleaning "Manual selection Exploratory (keeping many) Theoretically driven (keeping fewer)

4 "

Identify ‘sensitizing concepts’

Concepts = coded groups of words

5 "

Co-occurrence analysis "Connections between concepts

6 "

Visualization "Network analysis "Metrics "Validation

Case: Cybernorms!"www.thesurveybay.com "75 000 responses "Intellectual property rights, piracy, file sharing "Big data "23 000 full text responses "5 - 6000 pages of text

“Please give us your own comments on the topic of file-sharing, especially how the situation in your home country looks like and what you think will be the next big thing when it comes to the Internet and/or file-sharing”.

Textometrica for CCA!"

textometrica.humlab.umu.se

Textometrica: Step 1!""

Textometrica: Step 1!""

Textometrica: Step 1!""

Textometrica: Step 2!""

Textometrica: Step 2!""

Textometrica: Step 3!""

Textometrica: Step 3!""

Textometrica: Step 3!""

Textometrica: Step 3!""

CLUSTER ANALYSIS

Textometrica: Step 4!""

Textometrica: Step 5!"

Textometrica: Step 5!"

Beyond Textometrica!"

Result:!Connected concepts!"

artists

capitalism

digitalfilesharing

formats

country

information

free

industry

internet

sites

download

tv

games

people

laws

media

music

piracycompanies

share

services

spotify

A starting point for close readings

A quantitative result in itself (network metrics etc.)

A qualitative result in itself (close reading the graph)

An answer to “what is going on here?”

A starting point for formulating theory (cf. grounded theory)

A code (a semiotic system, a folksonomy, a discourse)

A pattern of power or resistance (cf. discourse theory)

artists

capitalism

digitalfilesharing

formats

country

information

free

industry

internet

sites

download

tv

games

people

laws

media

music

piracycompanies

share

services

spotify

Cool, but what is it?!"

www.simonlindgren.com "

twitter @simonlindgren

THANK YOU!!"