Date: May 25th 2017, 9:00-17:00 (ICA San Diego)
Full program: ICA_TMPA_program

Talks and slides:

Dr. Hai Liang: Scraping and preprocessing of social media data
Dr. Molly Roberts: Structural Topic Modelling
Dr. Andrew Schwartz: Machine learning on social media textual data for predicting psychological and health outcomes
Dr. Daniel Angus: Emerging methods for text visualization
Dr. Justin Grimmer: Statistical Models for Computational textual analysis and applications

Abstract: Manual content analysis has been one of the most distinctive and influential techniques in communication research for more than half a century. With the rise of digital and social media, recent years have seen a sharp growth in the sheer amount and types of textual data communication scholars often wish to explore, as well as changes to required skillsets needed for acquiring, storing, and processing data. Due to these changes researchers in communication often find manual content analysis methods inadequate for their needs. As a result, computational approaches to text mining are becoming gradually more valuable and even necessary for contemporary communication scholars. The pre-conference workshop “Computational tools for text mining, processing and analysis” aims to engage with these computational methods.

This pre-conference offers five talks given by world-class experts working at the frontier of computational textual analysis: Hai Liang, Molly Roberts, Andres Schwartz, Daniel Angus and Justin Grimmer. The program covers both introductory materials aimed at providing less experienced scholars with practical tools for analysis, as well as in-depth critical discussions on advanced issues including assumptions, properties, inferences, triangulation with other methods, and theory development. At the concluding panel, the invited speakers, panelists and the audience will engage in a discussion about the future of computational textual analysis in communication research and social science in general. Confirmed panelists include Dr. Joseph Cappella (the Gerald R. Miller Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. Dhavan Shah (the Louis A. & Mary E. Maier-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison).

It is our hope that participants will leave this full-day workshop not only with ready-to-use tools for their day-to-day research but also with a more comprehensive understanding of these methods’ assumptions, properties, theories and debates. The goal is to promote not only the usage, but a responsible usage, of computational methods for textual analysis.

Full program: ICA_TMPA_program