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How to Analyse Digital Content for Political Science Research
The seminar provides a detailed and practical introduction to the use of text and images for research related to politics. Students will learn how to collect and analyse political content shared via social media and other online platforms to address the important political questions of the day. The course will begin with a short refresher on the R programming language and previously studied statistical methods, before working on practical examples of digital content analysis as introduced in Prof. Dr. Daniela Braun’s ‘Current Developments in Political Science Research on Europe: ”Legitimacy Problems and Polarisation in European Societies”’ seminar. Finally, students will learn how to develop and test their own research questions using similar content and methods.
This seminar will run in parallel to "Quantitative Methods in Political Science Research: The Classical Toolbox" by Dr. Giuseppe Carteny. Students should opt to participate in one or the other course after the intitial refresher classes.
Literature:
- Watanabe and Müller (2024) Quanteda Tutorials https://tutorials.quanteda.io/
- Bail (2021) Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
- Laver, Benoit, and Garry (2003) ‘Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data’, American Political Science Review, 97(2), pp. 311–331. doi:10.1017/S0003055403000698.
Lecturer: Dr Alex Hartland
Dr Alex Hartland is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science with a focus on European Integration and International Relations at Saarland University.
He completed his PhD at the University of Manchester, where he analysed the impact of lobbying and public opinion on asylum policy in Germany and the UK. Previously, he studied Intercultural Conflict Management at the Alice Salomon Hochschule in Berlin and Psychology at the University of Warwick.
His work focuses on political trust, interest groups and comparative European politics. He uses survey data, quantitative text analysis, experimental research designs and qualitative methods to investigate the role of institutions, lobbying and public opinion in politics and political behaviour.