History of Quantitative Text Analysis
Chris Bail
Duke University
website: https://www.chrisbail.net
github: https://github.com/cbail
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chris_bail
Harold Laswell
Harold Laswell
“We may classify references into categories,” wrote Laswell in 1938, “ according to the understanding which prevails among those who are accustomed to the symbols. References used in interviews may be quantified by counting the number of references which fall into each category during a selected period of time (or per thousand words uttered).”
Ahead of his time?
In 1935- and at the age of 21-Laswell was developing methods that tracked the association between word utterances and physiological reactions (e.g. pulse rate, electrical conductivity of the skin, and blood pressure)
Timeline of Quantitative Text Analysis
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1934 | Laswell Produces first Key-Word Count |
| 1934 | Vygotsky Produces first Quantitative Narrative Analaysis |
| 1950 | Gottschalk Uses Content Analysis to Track Freudian Themes |
| 1950 | Turing Applies AI to text |
| 1952 | Bereleson Publishes First Textbook on Content Analysis |
| 1954 | First Automatic Translation of Text (Georgetown Experiment) |
| 1963 | Msteller and Wallace analyze Federalist Papers |
| 1965 | Tomashevsky Further Formalizes Quantitative Narrative Analysis |
Timeline of Quantitative Text Analysis
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1966 | Stone and Bales use mainframe computer to measure psychometric properties of text at RAND |
| 1980 | Decline of Chomskyean Formalism/NLP is Born |
| 1980 | Machine Learning is Applied to NLP |
| 1981 | Weintraub counts parts of speech |
| 1985 | Schrodt Introduces Automated Event Coding |
| 1986 | Pennebaker develops LIWC |
| 1989 | Franzosi brings Quantitative Narrative Analysis to Social Science |
Timeline of Quantitative Text Analysis
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 1998 | First Topic Models Developed |
| 1998 | Mohr conducts first Quantitative Analysis of Worldviews |
| 1999 | Bearman et al. apply Network Methods to Narratives |
| 2001 | Blei et al. develop LDA |
| 2003 | MALLET created |
| 2005 | Quin et al. use analyze political speeches using topic models |
| 2010 | King/Hopkins Bring Topic Models into mainstream |
| 2010 | Tools for Text Workshop at Washington |
An Interdisciplinary Field!