The Struggle of Combining Meaning-Oriented Qualitative and Interpretative Research with Computational Text Analysis
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Přiložené soubory | |
| Popis | The present paper overviews my beginner attempts to use computational text analysis in sociological work. As a cultural sociologist, I started with computational methods in attempts to combine them with my research practice that is primarily qualitative and interpretative for meaning-oriented goals. And since I am mainly self-taught, I tried to address the challenges of combining both method types for meaning-oriented research with designs that did not yield very informative results. I discuss my attempts and their pitfalls on two examples – what I did in my master’s thesis and what I am thinking about doing in my dissertation. The master’s thesis focused on reconstructing the ethos in permacultural literature, the dissertation works with media representations and imaginaries around retail micro-investing within the Czech post-socialist context. However, the topics are secondary. I primarily use the examples as examples of research problems, which I tried to tackle. Furthermore, I use them to illustrate the thinking behind these attempts and the deficiencies they have shown. I present mainly keyword focused approaches and my plans on utilizing supervised machine learning. What I am primarily seeking with my presentation is to set grounds for discussion on how to utilize computational text analysis for meaningoriented purposes and how to combine it with the interpretative methods. I also look for critical feedback on my early attempts to work with computational text-based methods from a more interested audience, as these methods are not commonly used at my home department. |