Gregor Wiedemann evaluates text mining applications for social science studies with respect to conceptual integration of consciously selected methods, systematic optimization of algorithms and workflows, and methodological reflections relating to empirical research. In an exemplary study, he introduces workflows to analyze a corpus of around 600,000 newspaper articles on the subject of “democratic demarcation” in Germany. He provides a valuable resource for innovative measures to social scientists and computer scientists in the field of applied natural language processing.

Online communities generate massive volumes of natural language data and the social sciences continue to learn how to best make use of this new information and the technology available for analyzing it. Text Mining brings together a broad range of contemporary qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic and practical guidance on analyzing large text collections. This accessible book, written by a sociologist and a computer scientist, surveys the fast-changing landscape of data sources, programming languages, software packages, and methods of analysis available today. Suitable for novice and experienced researchers alike, the book will help readers use text mining techniques more efficiently and productively.

Students in social science courses communicate, socialize, shop, learn, and work online. When they are asked to collect data for course projects they are often drawn to social media platforms and other online sources of textual data. There are many software packages and programming languages available to help students collect data online, and there are many texts designed to help with different forms of online research, from surveys to ethnographic interviews. But there is no textbook available that teaches students how to construct a viable research project based on online sources of textual data such as newspaper archives, site user comment archives, digitized historical documents, or social media user comment archives. Gabe Ignatow and Rada F. Mihalcea's new text An Introduction to Text Mining will be a starting point for undergraduates and first-year graduate students interested in collecting and analyzing textual data from online sources, and will cover the most critical issues that students must take into consideration at all stages of their research projects, including: ethical and philosophical issues; issues related to research design; web scraping and crawling; strategic data selection; data sampling; use of specific text analysis methods; and report writing.

Qualitative Data Analysis shows that learning how to analyse qualitative data by computer can be fun. Written in a stimulating style, with examples drawn mainly from every day life and contemporary humour, it should appeal to a wide audience.

How can you analyse narratives, interviews, field notes, or focus group data? Qualitative text analysis is ideal for these types of data and this textbook provides a hands-on introduction to the method and its theoretical underpinnings. It offers step-by-step instructions for implementing the three principal types of qualitative text analysis: thematic, evaluative, and type-building. Special attention is paid to how to present your results and use qualitative data analysis software packages, which are highly recommended for use in combination with qualitative text analysis since they allow for fast, reliable, and more accurate analysis. The book shows in detail how to use software, from transcribing the verbal data to presenting and visualizing the results. The book is intended for Master’s and Doctoral students across the social sciences and for all researchers concerned with the systematic analysis of texts of any kind.

This volume shows that the emergence of computational social science (CSS) is an endogenous response to problems from within the social sciences and not exogeneous. The three parts of the volume address various pathways along which CSS has been developing from and interacting with existing research frameworks. The first part exemplifies how new theoretical models and approaches on which CSS research is based arise from theories of social science. The second part is about methodological advances facilitated by CSS-related techniques. The third part illustrates the contribution of CSS to traditional social science topics, further attesting to the embedded nature of CSS. The expected readership of the volume includes researchers with a traditional social science background who wish to approach CSS, experts in CSS looking for substantive links to more traditional social science theories, methods and topics, and finally, students working in both fields.

Focusing on the integral role of the researcher, Qualitative Research for the Social Sciences uses a conversational writing style that draws readers into the excitement of the research process. Lichtman offers a balanced and nuanced approach, covering the full range of qualitative methodologies and viewpoints about the field, including coverage of social media as a tool to facilitate research or as a venue for study. After presenting theoretical concepts and a historical overview, Lichtman guides readers, step by step, through the research process, addressing issues of analyzing data, presenting completed research, and evaluating research. Real-world examples from across the social sciences provide both practical and theoretical information, helping readers understand abstract ideas and apply them to their own research.