Quantitative Text Analysis Research Articles

Retracing digital assumptions in social movements: the Italian case of No Tav

This paper aims to shed light on the key role of digital repertoire in shaping participation forms, challenging internet as a flexible, dynamic, and pervasive platform that transcends reality in terms of sense and relationship construction processes. The research design traces the narration and performance patterns in the last decade of the No Tav movement case study. The work examines the concept of innovation as both an evolving repertoire and a set of users’ practices. The empirical analysis is conducted through digital content analysis using quantitative textual analysis techniques. The research questions aim to understand how activists produce and share knowledge, what mobilization patterns emerge and are enabled by digital media, and how organizational assumptions change due to the digital turn.

Electoral Incentives and Negotiated Settlements: Legislative Deliberation on the Mindanao Conflict in the Philippines

Some conflict‐experiencing countries undergo both violent and electoral competitions. In other words, electoral competition evolves while nonstate actors struggle to realize their political and cultural demands by arms. Although increasing attention has been paid to the interplay between domestic political dynamics and violent conflict, we still know little about how the electoral calculations of legislators shape their response to negotiated settlement, possibly influencing conflict processes. By examining the congressional records of the House of Representatives in the Philippines, this study conducts quantitative text analyses to assess the impacts of electoral incentives—shaped by executive popularity, district ethnic composition, and the occurrence of conflict‐related violence—on legislators' response to negotiated settlement. The results demonstrate that legislators are sensitive to constituents' views on conflict settlement by showing support or opposition to negotiated settlement, anticipating their electoral fortunes in the next election.

Comparative analysis of the image of a Chinese migrant in the Chinese mainland media and the media of Chinese emigration

The research presents a comparative analysis of the image of a Chinese migrant in the mainland Chinese media and the media of Chinese emigration. The research is based on the study of the content of publications such as The People's Daily and Xinhua on the one hand, and emigrant media, including The World Journal and The Epoch Times, on the other. The aim of the study is to identify differences and similarities in the representation of Chinese migrants, as well as to assess the influence of the political and cultural context on the formation of their image. In the Chinese mainland media, migrants are often presented as successful and patriotic representatives of the nation, keeping in touch with their homeland, which corresponds to China's "soft power" strategy. The expatriate opposition media is also biased in shaping the image of the Chinese migrant, often labeling migration as political rather than economic. The object of the study is the materials of the Chinese mainland and migrant media on the issues of Chinese emigration in the period 2023-2024. The subject of the study is the image of a Chinese migrant in the Chinese media. The methodology of this study includes content analysis and quantitative analysis of Chinese news media texts. As a result of the conducted research, the main similarities and significant differences in the representation of Chinese migrants in mainland Chinese media and emigrant media were revealed. The image of a migrant in the Chinese mainland media is formed within the framework of state propaganda, with an emphasis on patriotism and the preservation of cultural ties with the Motherland. Migrants are portrayed as successful representatives of the Chinese nation, keeping in touch with China and promoting its interests abroad. This reflects China's state policy of strengthening "soft power" and supporting the diaspora for economic and cultural influence in the international arena. The expatriate opposition media are also biased in shaping the image of the Chinese migrant, often labeling migration as political rather than economic. On the other hand, independent expatriate media such as the World Journal reflect more diverse and often critical points of view, highlighting the problems of migrant integration, discrimination and the complexities of life in another country. Independence from the Chinese authorities allows these media to focus on practical issues, avoiding political bias.

Sexist textbooks: Automated analysis of gender bias in 1,255 books from 34 countries.

Textbooks play a critical role in schooling around the world. Small sample studies show that many books continue to under-represent women and girls, and to portray men and women in stereotypical gendered roles. In this paper, we use quantitative text analysis to assess the degree of gender bias in a newly assembled corpus of 1,255 English language school textbooks from 34 countries that are publicly available online. We find consistent patterns of under-representation of female characters and portrayal of stereotypical gendered roles. Women and girls appear less frequently, are portrayed as more passive, are less likely to be associated with work or achievement, and are more likely to be associated with the home and traditionally female occupations. Comparing across countries, female representation in books is correlated with higher GDP and more legal rights for women. Under-representation and stereotypes are a particular problem in South Asia.

Well said!: Professional norms and female justices' evaluation of lower court opinion text

AbstractSupreme Court justices' opinions shape the contours of case law binding throughout the United States. Importantly though, justices do not write their opinions de novo. Rather, they routinely draw on lower court judges' opinion language when crafting opinions. In doing so, justices stretch the substantive impact of lower court judges' reasoning beyond the boundaries of their circuits. However, justices do not draw equally on lower court opinions; while previous work often ties this to judges' professional qualifications, we draw on work stressing female supervisors are more likely to enforce professional norms on subordinates. We argue female justices are more likely to draw upon lower court opinions complying with professional norms because of greater implicit norm internalization over the course of their careers. We test this proposition with a quantitative textual analysis of the justices' opinions and lower court opinions. We find support for our argument. This raises normative concerns about the overall impact of greater judicial diversity.

Comparative Study of Chinese Translations of “Gitanjali” based on Natural Language Processing

This paper employs the HanLP natural language processing model to conduct a quantitative text analysis of four Chinese translations of “Gitanjali”. The analysis examines text features such as character and sentence count, lexical properties, lexical density, and high-frequency words. The results indicate that, except for Wu Yan’s translation, the text features of the other translations are relatively similar in terms of data distribution. Wu Yan’s translation has higher character and sentence count, and usage of lexical properties than the other translations, but it has the lowest lexical density, indicating a lower information density. The study also reveals that the choice of lexical properties and high-frequency words in each translation is influenced by the translator’s personal language preferences. Although the types of high-frequency words are relatively fixed, their frequencies vary significantly. Based on these findings, the study further uncovers the intrinsic logic and structural relationships among different text features, offering significant insights for the study of specific literary and translation texts, as well as broader translation and linguistic research. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of HanLP in literary and translation research, highlighting the potential of natural language processing models in large-scale text analysis.

The urban in ecology: a quantitative textual analysis of the scientific literature over a century

Many authors have described ‘urban ecology’ as a subfield of ecology that emerged in the 1990s and has expanded exponentially. We propose to take a step further and analyse the expansion of the ‘urban’ in ecology with a novel quantitative approach, with the aim to better understand the relationship between ecology and the urban. Previous quantitative assessments of the urban in ecology have focused on short to medium time spans (5 to 40 years) and on research coined as ‘urban ecology’, and have rarely considered the content of publications (e.g., vocabulary and topics) using quantitative methods. In this paper, we conduct a bibliometric assessment and an in-depth quantitative textual data analysis of a corpus of 960 articles published from 1922 to 2018 in 10 leading English-language journals in ecology and conservation biology. We address the following questions: (1) When and how have urban environments been integrated into ecological research during the past century? (2) What urban research topics have been investigated in ecology during the same period? (3) How have these research topics changed through time? Our results show that the urban was never entirely absent from publications in ecology. The quantitative analyses highlight three turning points (1970s, 1990s and 2000s) in the relationship between ecology and the urban. Moreover, they help visualize the shift from particularly scattered publications at the beginning of the period to publications characterized by a more homogeneous vocabulary, reflecting the stabilization of a research field focused on the urban in ecology.

Charting the Universe of Metal Music Lyrics and Analyzing Their Relation to Perceived Audio Hardness

We analyze the relationship between the musical and the lyrical content of metal music by combining automated audio feature extraction and quantitative text analysis on a corpus of 124,288 song lyrics from this genre. Based on this text corpus, a topic model is first constructed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). For a subsample of 503 songs, scores for predicting perceived musical hardness (heaviness) are extracted using an audio feature model and corroborated via listening tests. By combining both audio feature and text analysis, we (1) offer a comprehensive overview of the lyrical topics present within the metal genre and (2) are able to establish whether levels of hardness are associated with the occurrence of particularly harsh (and other) textual topics. Twenty typical topics are identified and projected into a topic space using multidimensional scaling (MDS). Positive correlations are found between musical hardness and textual topics dealing with “brutal death,” “dystopia,” “archaisms and occultism,” “religion and satanism,” “battle,” and “(psychological) madness,” while there is a negative association with topics like “personal life” and “love and romance.” Further, we show different prevalences of the identified topics within different metal subgenres. In summary, this article presents the first comprehensive computational corpus study of musical and lyrical content in metal music.

Group Violence in Crime: Analyzing Crime Severity, Group Size, and Juvenile Involvement Through Police Statistics and Newspaper Articles in Japan

This study investigated the social psychological characteristics of group violence in crime using Japanese data. Two main hypotheses were examined: (1) crimes committed by groups, particularly larger groups, are more violent than those committed by individuals and (2) juvenile violent crimes are more likely to involve groups than adult violent crimes. Study 1 analyzed police agency crime statistical data and found that group crimes were more violent than individual crimes, with the level of violence increasing with group size. Additionally, juvenile crimes involved larger group sizes on average than adult crimes. Study 2 involved a quantitative text analysis of Japanese newspaper articles and revealed that articles containing group-related words frequently included terms associated with death and brutality, indicating a higher likelihood of fatal outcomes from group violence. Furthermore, co-occurrence analysis indicated a correlation between juvenile delinquency and group crimes. These findings support both hypotheses, providing evidence from non-Western data for research on group violence that predominantly relies on Western data.

The synchronic and diachronic evolution of key themes around SDG 4 before and after 2015: From a quantitative analysis of web-downloaded texts

The authoritative ideas of what education should be like under the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) are constructed through discourse among key actors of the “international education community” at large. This article presents the evolution of international education discourse, comparing the periods before and after September 2015. The analysis is presented in two parts. The first part discusses the period before the adoption of SDGs in 2015, during which the agenda was formulated through discourse. The author identifies themes such as cognitive and noncognitive skills, learning outcomes, measurement and indicators. Actors shaping the discourse included mission-driven civil society organisations (CSOs), constituency-based CSOs, technical specialist groups, UN Member States and philanthropic organisations. The second part is based on a large sample text mining using 832 web-downloaded texts published between 2015 and 2022. The list of key themes largely mirrors those identified in the first part, although the relative weight among them has changed over time. The emphasis has shifted from global, structural topics to more local, specific ones, with increased attention on individual learners and their skills and knowledge. It suggests the uprooted nature of global governance, particularly at the time of SDG adoption. The fact that the term “SDGs” has permeated to the household level reflects widening participation in the global discourse on education. The author observes two contrasting perspectives: one discusses education’s contributions to noneducational goals, such as employment, economic growth, achieving sustainability or guaranteeing basic human rights; while another represents traditional educationalism, which tends to equate schooling with the traditional classifications of primary, secondary and higher education.

Research on the Work-for-Relief Policy within the Scope of Comprehensive Rural Revitalization: Quantitative Analysis of Policy Texts Based on 71 Policy Documents

Work-for-relief plays a unique role in China’s journey toward modernization. From the perspectives of policy tools and interest analysis, this paper uses quantitative analysis of policy texts and integrates grounded theory to build a policy expression analysis model to discuss the current work-for-relief policy system. The study found that China’s use of the work-for-relief policy is unbalanced, and it is necessary to enhance the involvement of non-governmental sectors, as well as to fully consider the policy’s target groups and the social issues that need addressing.

Does digital strategy, organizational agility, digital lead-ership promote DT? A study of digital strategy, organiza-tional agility, digital leadership affects corporate DT in Chinese technological firms

Digital transformation (DT), digital strategy and digital leadership, digital agility seem to be concomitant phenomena in recent years, drawing a NIT theory, TAM theory and digital transformation theory, this study developed and tested a model and hypothesis on how digital transformational leadership, digital strategy and organizational agility influence digital transformation. Alternatively, this paper found that digital transformational leadership, digital strategy and organizational agility positively influence digital transformation and their relationships. This study uses survey data from the Chinese companies -Qihoo and Didi Global as a sample. The sample size is more than 220 respondents. The quantitative text analysis method is used to measure the attention to digitalization of Qihoo and Didi companies. This paper discusses: (1) explore the relationship between digital transformational leadership, organizational agility and digital strategy, and how they affect digital transformation in China (Qihoo360 and Didi Global firm). (2) identify the firm's measurement items of digital transformation organizational in the relationship between digital transformational leadership, digital agility, and digital strategy. The findings of this study provide an advanced understanding of the impact of transformational leadership, digital strategy and organizational agility on digital transformation and the role of digital strategy in Chinese technological companies.

Transferability of Effective Consultation Skills for Decision-Making Support in the Voluntary Surrender of Older Adult Drivers' Licences in Super-Aged Japan.

Previously, we identified eight effective consultation skills to support decision-making in the voluntary surrender of older adult drivers' licences in super-aged Japan. This study aimed to clarify the transferability of these skills. We collected text data by interviewing 11 safe-driving counsellors (four police officers, four clerical staff and three nurses) in the License Division of the National Police Agency from February to March 2022. Interviews were semi-structured and conducted by telephone or email. During the interview, participants were asked to recall their experiences as counsellors providing decision-making support to older drivers and to compare their experiences with the eight consultation skills. We analysed the content of the responses by quantitative text analysis with KH Coder 3 software. As a characteristic of the words and phrases used by counsellors in their narratives about consultation skills, the most frequently extracted words from among 3147 words were think, parties and family, and promote had the highest mediation centrality. The eight subgraphs were 'Respecting the will of relevant parties from their standpoint is natural', 'Listening attentively and empathetically to relevant parties is effective', 'Presenting objective data to guide decisions is successful', 'Showing cognitive functioning test results is often effective', 'Counselors with medical expertise can elicit positive counseling outcomes', 'Intervention by medical or police counselors facilitates the decision to surrender voluntarily', 'Counseling skills need to be improved' and 'A diagram of the 8 skills is helpful for inexperienced counselors'. The results suggest that the eight consultation skills have similarities and are transferable. This transferability might contribute to practical application or cohort follow-up study research. These skills can be incorporated into counsellor training, and counsellors can be expected to use these skills in the future. Regardless of the safe-driving counsellor's years of experience, the skills can help them provide uniform and accurate support in decision-making regarding the voluntary surrender of older adult drivers' licences. These skills are a promising approach to help older adults lead safe and secure lives as they age.

Quantitative Stylistic Analysis of Middle Chinese Texts Based on the Dissimilarity of Evolutive Core Word Usage

Stylistic analysis enables open-ended and exploratory observation of languages. To fill the gap in the quantitative analysis of the stylistic systems of Middle Chinese, we construct lexical features based on the evolutive core word usage and scheme a Bayesian method for feature parameters estimation. The lexical features are from the Swadesh list, each of which has different word forms along with the language evolution during the Middle Ages. We thus count the varied word of those entries along with the language evolution as the linguistic features. With the Bayesian formulation, the feature parameters are estimated to construct a high-dimensional random feature vector to obtain the pair-wise dissimilarity matrix of all the texts based on different distance measures. Finally, we perform the spectral embedding and clustering to visualize, categorize, and analyze the linguistic styles of Middle Chinese texts. The quantitative result agrees with the existing qualitative conclusions and, furthermore, betters our understanding of the linguistic styles of Middle Chinese from both the inter-category and intra-category aspects. It also helps unveil the special styles induced by the indirect language contact.

Location matters! Geospatial dynamics of MP responses to Covid‐19 protests in multilevel systems

AbstractIn liberal democracies, protest can serve as a trigger for necessary policy reforms, but it can also be used by a loud minority to advance political goals against the will of the majority. Focusing on such vocal protests in the context of the Covid‐19 pandemic, we investigate the following question: How does the location of protest events affect the likelihood of political engagement with the protests in a multilevel system? Combining social movement literature with studies of issue attention and rhetorical responsiveness, we analyze how German members of parliaments’ (MPs) responses vary using their tweets from the onset of the pandemic to the German federal election in September 2021. Using quantitative text analysis, we measure rhetorical responsiveness to Covid‐19 protests and apply multilevel regression analyses and difference‐in‐differences. We find that more protests lead to more attention; however, MPs respond most strongly to protests within the state they represent. Furthermore, politicians’ level within the German multilevel system affects their attention to these protests, with MPs elected at lower levels of an electoral system responding more to local protest events than MPs elected at higher levels. The results highlight the importance of the location of protests in attracting political attention.

Building deservingness and fairness with discourse: how states construct the social legitimacy of pension schemes

ABSTRACT How do modern states legitimize and frame their redistributive social policies in promoting policy changes to the public? This article studies pension reform in China, using quantitative text analysis of articles from official newspapers to investigate the state’s efforts in framing and crafting the social legitimacy – particularly deservingness and fairness – of its then-new pension schemes from 1978 to 2008. The results demonstrate that the state made efforts to reconstruct social knowledge on fairness and deservingness in pension reforms through both the social values and individual subjectivities. The state’s strategies for reconstructing public expectations for pension benefit redistribution and welfare responsibility allocation differ for retrenchment and expansive reforms, even though these strategies both target recrafting and reframing the principles of reciprocity based on ‘contribution and rewards’ and ‘rights and obligations’. The state also builds images of deserving and undeserving social groups by blurring the distinction between merit and equity and ultimately reshaping individual subjectivity as a self-regulated and self-motivated ‘socialized self’.

Riding the yellow wave: the online populist communication of Rassemblement National (RN) leaders in response to the Gilets Jaunes protests and the 2019 European elections

ABSTRACT Radical-right populist parties will often try to exploit and ride a wave of popular discontent for their own electoral gain. This paper studies the online populist communication of the leaders of the Rassemblement National (RN) in France in the context of the Gilets Jaunes (GJ) protests and the 2019 European election. It analyses the Twitter activity of these leaders to determine whether they temporarily softened their nativist and exclusionary stances to align their communications with the anti-elitist discourse of the protest movement. We explored this question by employing a quantitative text analysis using R Studio tools of their tweets over a 12-month period in combination with a more qualitative analysis of their output on this social media platform. We carried out tests on bigram frequency, network structure, as well as qualitative analysis of posts on the GJ protests and then compared this data with existing works on the GJ, to identify whether and how the RN adapted its social media discourse at strategic times in the election cycle to better suit the Gilets Jaunes’ demands and themes. The results provide support for the expectation of a strategic modification and moderation of exclusionary populist discourse online with both politicians returning to nativist themes after the European election campaign was over and the GJ mobilisation lost momentum. We therefore suggest that the change in output is part of a strategic moderation or ‘de-demonisation’ in order to gain a wider pool of potential voters and in particular those sympathetic to the protest movement.

Risk culture of banks and corporate innovation: Evidence from Chinese listed companies

The importance of risk culture in the banking sector was highlighted after the 2008 financial crisis. Chinese companies often turn to commercial bank loans, which serve as an important source of financing, to acquire the necessary funds for corporate innovation. Quantitative text analysis of the annual reports of Chinese banks was used to measure their risk culture. By analyzing a firm's loan statement, we were able to identify the bank that provided the loan. This study examines the impact of banks' risk culture on corporate innovation using a fixed-effects model, with Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2020 as the research sample. In addressing the endogenous problem of banks' risk culture, this paper adopts an instrumental variable approach using population migration and dock culture, and tests the robustness through the IV-2SLS method. The study finds that emphasizing the development of risk culture within the bank promotes corporate innovation. Entrepreneurial innovation is influenced by risk culture through debt management, a critical mechanism.

Territory, Place, Flow, and Scale: Spatial Analysis in the IPE of Trade

ABSTRACT We assess the presence and use of the geographical concepts of territory, place, flow, and scale in the International Political Economy (IPE) literature on trade. While IPE scholars have arguably responded somewhat to earlier calls to embrace geography, the uptake remains limited. Relatively few articles incorporate such concepts explicitly and tend to ignore critical scholarship on these ideas. After summarizing the theoretical dimensions of territory, place, flow, and scale in geography, we analyze publications in six leading political science/IPE journals from 2010 to 2022 to identify articles related to trade that draw on one or more of these four concepts. Using a mix of quantitative text analysis and close qualitative readings of selected articles, we find that IPE scholars occasionally use territory, flow, and scale explicitly, but more often their use is implicit. In contrast, place is used rarely, only implicitly, but perhaps offers the greatest opportunity to frame new questions in studies of trade. More generally, we conclude that explicit attention to these four concepts and their use in critical geography scholarship, would help to develop richer, more critical IPE approaches.

Computational Legal Studies Comes of Age

Computational analysis techniques are transforming empirical legal scholarship. Two paradigms have emerged: law-as-code, which seeks to represent legal rules in a logical, executable format; and law-as-data, which leverages quantitative analysis of legal texts to reveal patterns and insights. This article surveys these approaches, emphasizing recent developments in large language models and generative artificial intelligence (AI). Law-as-code systems have enabled applications from tax preparation software to smart contracts, but realizing the vision of fully computational law has proven challenging. Law-as-data techniques like natural language processing and machine learning have charted the semantic relationship between courts and illuminated changes in judicial culture. Generative models showcase AI's explosive progress, with impressive feats like passing the U.S. bar example, but they also highlight limitations like factual inaccuracy and interpretability issues. Hybrid approaches integrating computational law, data science, and AI offer a promising research direction. As these tools spread, legal scholars can analyze more legal data than ever before, but they must remain cognizant of challenges like biased or low-quality data and linguistic/cultural limitations. Used judiciously alongside traditional methods, computational analysis has the potential to revolutionize empirical legal studies.