Textual Analysis & Tableau for Twitter | Assignment 2

By Aeyiondy Dorant & Xaviera Huisman

For Social Sciences qualitative research methods are a valuable tool to really understand how reality is socially constructed and to grasp the meanings that are created by people, be it individuals or groups. As a result, text analysis is seen as one of the most important methods that can be used in cultural studies. “When we perform textual analysis on a text, we make an educated guess at some of the most likely interpretations that might be made of that text” (McKee, 2001, p. 3). While conducting textual analysis it is not prefered to find the correct interpretation of the text. According to McKee (2001) “there is no such thing as a single, ‘correct’ interpretation of any text. There are large numbers of possible interpretations, some of which will be more likely than others in particular circumstances” (p. 4). With textual analysis it is of even higher importance to understand how we make sense and share this created sense with the rest of the world. This is imperative as there are an array of different meanings attributed to a certain topic by people. All in all it is important to conduct a text analysis in order to get a grasp on what kind of meaning is given to the world. With that in mind we would like to elaborate on the fact why it is considerable to conduct textual analysis on the following case.

On November 21st, a week after the Paris attacks, Brussels was reported to be on lockdown as a result of ‘imminent’ terror attack threats (Murray et al., 2015). Using the website www.hashtagtracking.com, and through browsing Twitter we noticed that three English hashtags were prominent in tweets regarding the lockdown namely, #brussels #brusselsalert and #brusselslockdown.

The types of Tweets utilizing these hashtags represent what Menchen-Trevino (2013) refers to as participation traces in the field of digital behaviour. Menchen-Trevino sees participation traces as a vital part of social scientific research “Participation data forms a very small part of overall digital trace data, but it is particularly important in social science research, as it is often a record of intentional actions” (p. 330). Tweets although part of participation data, cannot be considered as semantically rich, as they only allow the use of 140 characters. Yet even with the limited semantics people are able to convey meanings through tweets in real time, as a situation is occurring. Not only that, but tweets also show the social aspect of meaning creation, as others can react and add their insights by retweeting, replying and liking. For this reason we believe that tweets, both text and image based, are perfectly suited for textual analysis or semiotic analysis.  

Take for example the request by officials to not tweet about ongoing Lockdown, has lead to the collective recreation of meaning by posting the pictures of cats with the hashtag instead. Tweets like these show us how people are making sense of the world and the situation they live in (McKee, 2001).

So how then can these tweets be analyzed for meaning?

By using the Twitter Web application for tableau it is fairly easy to create a text based dataset surrounding a relevant hashtag. By inserting these texts into special text analysis software such as Context and Sentistrength, one can determine the themes and topics present in the tweets, as well as determine the most prominent sentiments.
To take it a step further and to visualize the textual analysis, the Tableau software offers a handy set of tools with which one can actually visually show which themes are most recurrent and which sentiments are mostly present in the social chatter on twitter. Furthermore Tableau can show the different regions that are participating in the creation of meaning.

This was this weeks exploration of Tableau and other Digital Research methods.

SOURCES

McKee, A. (2001). A beginner’s guide to textual analysis. Metro Magazine, 1 - 21.

Menchen-Trevino, E. (2013). Collecting Vertical Trace Data: Big Possibilities and Big
Challenges for Multi-method Research. Policy & Internet, 5(3), 328{339.
doi:10.1002/1944-2866.POI336

Murray, W., Gayle, D., Fishwick, C., Traynor, I. and Shaheen, K. (2015). Threat of

'imminent' Isis attack puts Brussels on lockdown - live. [online] the Guardian.

Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/nov/21/paris-attacks-three  -suspects-including-alleged-scout-arrested-in-turkey-live [Accessed 21 Nov.
2015].