I Believe in Text Analysis

The HSE St Petersburg Laboratory for Internet Studies (LINIS) is hosting a conference on 18-19 September on Social Media and Social Movements. A key speaker at the conference is Robert Ackland Associate Professor and Deputy Director (Education) at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, Australian National University. Professor Ackland who is well known for his work on social network analysis and author of Web Social Science which has become a virtual handbook for studies in the field, will deliver a paper on Online Activist Fields on Web 1.0 and Twitter and lead a seminar on analysing links with VOSON.

The HSE English Language News Service asked Professor Ackland about his work and his hopes for the conference.

— Are you excited about the conference in St.Petersburg?

— I'm very keen to meet Russian scholars and students working in the field of social media and social movements, as well as the other international visitors at the conference.  It will be great to make new connections and hear about innovative and cutting-edge research in this field.  I've been to St Petersburg twice before as a tourist, and so it is exciting for me to be making my first work-related visit to Russia.  I hope to have a chance to see some of the beautiful sites in the city again.  I studied Russian around 20 years ago and while I can't speak much Russian, Mне очень нравится говорить по-русский, and so I hope I'll get a bit of practice!

— How did your cooperation with the HSE start?

— I first met Olessia Koltsova and her HSE colleagues at the Sunbelt International Social Networks conference in Hamburg in 2013.  I later had email correspondence with Peter Meylakhs about our shared research interests and Peter was interested to know more about the VOSON software for hyperlink network analysis and also my research on online social movements with my colleague Mathieu O'Neil.

 Social media leads to data and tools that can empower social movements, but social media is also used by government and business actors who are possibly on the other side of particular social issues

Robert Ackland
Associate Professor and Deputy Director (Education) at the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, Australian National University

— You are a famous leading researcher on digital society. What is your prognosis for the next breakthrough in this area?

— That is very kind of you!  I'm primarily a methodologist so I'm interested to see what the next methodological innovation in social movements research will be.  There is a lot of hype about "big data" at present and social scientists will need to increasingly work with computer scientists, but there might also be scope for useful collaboration with other disciplines, for example linguistics.  I believe text analysis will become increasingly important for research into online social movements, but this will need be done at scale since there are huge amounts of tweets, blog posts and other social media content being generated.

— Social media and social movements are inseparable these days. What are the most striking results of this relationship?

— Social media is having a significant impact on the operation (and perhaps even definition) of social movements.  The fact that social movement actors are using social media for organisation and communication means that there is data available for understanding the formation of issues and how they are evolving and being contested.  Social media leads to data and tools that can empower social movements, but social media is also used by government and business actors who are possibly on the other side of particular social issues.

Robert Ackland’s latest book is:

Web Social Science: Concepts, Data and Tools for Social Scientists in the Digital Age (SAGE Publications)