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Beyond Keywords: Tracking the Evolution of Conversational Clusters in Social Media

Author

Listed:
  • James P. Houghton
  • Michael Siegel
  • Stuart Madnick
  • Nobuaki Tounaka
  • Kazutaka Nakamura
  • Takaaki Sugiyama
  • Daisuke Nakagawa
  • Buyanjargal Shirnen

Abstract

The potential of social media to give insight into the dynamic evolution of public conversations, and into their reactive and constitutive role in political activities, has to date been underdeveloped. While topic modeling can give static insight into the structure of a conversation, and keyword volume tracking can show how engagement with a specific idea varies over time, there is need for a method of analysis able to understand how conversations about societal values evolve and react to events in the world by incorporating new ideas and relating them to existing themes. In this article, we propose a method for analyzing social media messages that formalizes the structure of public conversations and allows the sociologist to study the evolution of public discourse in a rigorous, replicable, and data-driven fashion. This approach may be useful to those studying the social construction of meaning, the origins of factionalism and internecine conflict, or boundary-setting and group-identification exercises and has potential implications.

Suggested Citation

  • James P. Houghton & Michael Siegel & Stuart Madnick & Nobuaki Tounaka & Kazutaka Nakamura & Takaaki Sugiyama & Daisuke Nakagawa & Buyanjargal Shirnen, 2019. "Beyond Keywords: Tracking the Evolution of Conversational Clusters in Social Media," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 48(3), pages 588-607, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:48:y:2019:i:3:p:588-607
    DOI: 10.1177/0049124117729705
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    Cited by:

    1. Pilar Aparicio-Martinez & Alberto-Jesus Perea-Moreno & María Pilar Martinez-Jimenez & María Dolores Redel-Macías & Manuel Vaquero-Abellan & Claudia Pagliari, 2019. "A Bibliometric Analysis of the Health Field Regarding Social Networks and Young People," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(20), pages 1-25, October.

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