Advancing social science research by applying computational linguistics

Abstract

AbstractThis paper discusses the growing trend of applying computational thinking and linguistic approaches to social science research, arguing that computational linguistics is a useful but underutilized approach that may potentially be able to make significantly contributions to research in a wide range of social science domains. The paper begins with an introduction to computational thinking and argues that this approach can be applied not only in the sciences but also in the social sciences. Next, the paper discusses the linguistic turn in the social sciences and provides an overview of research on manual content analysis. The following sections describe how automatic content analysis evolved from manual content analysis, and describe how a computational approach can support content analysis. The paper then describes principles and techniques for applying automatic content analysis. Next, the paper gives examples of domains where automatic content analysis is already being applied and domains where it could be applied in the future. Finally, the paper calls attention to the need for additional work in this area.