Text Mining in Multi-Method Criminological Research Design

• In Event: Lightning Talk: Computers, Technology, Social Media, & Radicalization

Abstract

Due to the digitization of society, people leave more and more footprints behind in textual form, which can be automatically collected, processed, and analyzed by text mining techniques. The trend may lead social researchers to overcome the empirical crisis of sociology and create a novel way of researching crime. Previous studies successfully applied text mining to investigate hate crime by analyzing social media posts, to learn about cybercriminal groups from forum threads, or to examine illicit drug trafficking on darknet markets. The different text mining techniques can be applied independently or as an element of multi-method or mixed-method research design. For example, they can be used to provide background for survey research by analyzing public discourse trends, or to add quantitative results to qualitative content analysis. Besides presenting the best practices, this talk is intended to shed light on the added value of adapting text mining techniques in criminological research projects, and thus to lay the foundations for future research collaborations.

Author

• Akos Szigeti, National University of Public Service, Hungary