Quantitative text analysis is rapidly gaining in prominence across the social sciences. With the massive availability of data on the web in the form of mass media content, speeches, press releases, websites, social media, etc., scholars in the fields of communication sciences, economics, political science, psychology and economics, increasingly appreciate quantitative text analysis as a method of learning about, among other things, content, topics, and ideology in spoken and written text.
To be at the forefront of these developments, we invite interested scholars to participate in a 2-day conference at which best practices in applied work, new methodologies and findings from text analysis are exchanged and discussed. In particular, we are interested in substantive applications of text analysis within the topics (broadly defined) of public opinion, elite communication or party politics.
The meeting will take place 21-22 June 2016 at the University of Amsterdam, starting 21 June around noon and ending 22 June around the same time. This will leave interested scholars who also plan on attending EPSA enough time to travel to Brussels, which is a comfortable 2-hour train ride from Amsterdam with trains leaving every hour. American scholars attending EPSA might even want to consider flying into Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, an important hub for transatlantic flights coming into Europe.
Goals:
- Establishing a research community around topics of quantitative text analysis with a substantive focus on elite-mass interactions in the European Union;
- Creating a forum where researchers working on text analysis can get meaningful feedback on their work before they send it out for review;
- Discussion and exchange of ideas, best practices in applied work, new methodologies and substantive new findings in text analysis;
- Network opportunities for developing fruitful (multidisciplinary) collaboration in future work.
Structure
- The workshop will have a panel structure. Presentations should have both a substantive (what can we learn from text analysis) and applied focus (how exactly was the analysis conducted). Panels will be assigned two discussants: one whose focus will be more substantive, and one who helps push the paper forward in methodological terms.
Preliminary Topics
This conference is inviting papers on the following topics (although we want to emphasize that list is by no means exhaustive; all interesting proposals applications of text analysis will be considered)
- Topic modeling;
- Sentiment analysis;
- Comparative (multilingual) approaches to text analysis;
- Descriptive statistics of text. Quantities of Interest;
- Empirical applications of text analysis in the context of elite-mass interactions;
- Assumptions of text analysis in empirical work;
- Visualization of Text;
Location
The workshop will take place in Amsterdam on 22 June 2016. Participation in the workshop is easily combined with attendance of EPSA (23-25 June); Amsterdam is an easy, 2-hour train ride away from Brussels. Conference dinner, lunch and coffee will be provided.
Accommodation and Travel
A selected number of travel grants (max 500EUR) will be available for junior scholars presenting a paper.
Dates
| 1 March | Deadline abstracts |
| 1 April | Acceptance notifications |
| 21 – 22 June | Text Analysis Workshop EUENGAGE |
Submissions
Abstracts (200-word maximum) can be sent to Martijn Schoonvelde (h.j.m.schoonvelde@vu.nl). The deadline for abstracts is 1 March 2016. Acceptance notifications are sent out 1 April 2016.
Organizers
This conference is organized by Gijs Schumacher, assistant professor in political science at the University of Amsterdam, and Martijn Schoonvelde, postdoctoral researcher in political science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Both work for EUENGAGE. Questions about the conference can be directed to either Gijs (g.schumacher@uva.nl) or Martijn (h.j.m.schoonvelde@vu.nl)