Prof. Amy Catalinac from NYU will visit WORD LAB to talk about using computational text analysis in her research on political science in Japan. Amy's recent book is Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2016) and she gave a tutorial in Japanese on quantitative text analysis to scholars at the Japanese Economic Association in 2018, among other publications and activities. Here is Amy's summary of the talk:
"I introduce quantitative text analysis, an exciting new set of tools for social scientists working on Japan and in Japanese. First, we explain why these methodologies are useful in attempting to answer questions of substantive interest. Second, we outline the workflow of the typical project that employs quantitative text analysis, paying particular attention to how texts written in the Japanese language can be handled at each stage. Third, we provide an overview of the statistical models most commonly used by political scientists working with text and
demonstrate that, with the adjustments we identify, they can be readily applied to Japanese-language texts. Finally, we point out challenges, including the relative absence of adequate investment in large-scale, publicly available data collections and a sparsity of methodological training. The discipline of political science in Japan will need to grapple with these issues to enable the use of these tools to become as widespread as they are elsewhere".
Date:
Thursday, November 21, 2019
Location:
Room 526: Candice and Robert Willoughby East Asian Studies Seminar
Campus:
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center
Categories:
Research Methods
