Computer-aided text analysis: an open-aired laboratory for social sciences

Abstract

Thanks, on the one hand, to the extraordinary availability of colossal textual archives and, on the other hand, to advances in computational possibilities, today the social scientist has at their disposal an extraordinary laboratory, made of millions of interacting subjects and billions of texts. An unprecedented, yet challenging, opportunity for science. How to test, corroborate models? How to control, interpret and validate Big Data? What is the role of theory in the universe of patterns and statistical correlations? In this article, we will show some general characteristics of the use of computational tools for the analysis of texts, and some applications in the areas of public communication of S&T and Science and Technology Studies (STS), also showing some of their limitations and pitfalls. AbstractPublic understanding of science and technology; Representations of science and technology; Science communication: theory and models KeywordsThe information deluge has flooded social sciences. Governments around the world digitalize and make available laws and projects, parliamentary debates and questions, social and economic indicators, party funding, government programs, polls and public opinion polls, maps, and models, due to new governance practices (and the new rhetoric) of transparency, accountability, participation and deliberation. Dynamics of globalized markets and customer demand force large and small media outlets (newspapers and magazines, TVs and radios, network on the Internet and on social networks) to make it possible to download huge databases, including archives of what was written, said, sung over a period of decades.Publishers publish their books in digital format. Libraries and newspaper libraries, as well as corporations such as Google, file millions of publications containing a considerable amount of literature and world history. New forms of sociability, on and offline, new modes, effects and affections of contemporary individualism lead tens of millions of users to illustrate, narrate, edit, and caption on web 2.0 their tastes and intimacies, their daily life and their memories, the interactions, associations, conflicts, dreams, resentments and confessions. We are exposed to millions of gigabytes of information and, at the same time, we are tireless

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