Monitoring first broadcast then print media over the last 70 years, nearly half of the annual output of Western intelligence global news monitoring is now derived from Internet–based news, standing testament to the Web’s disruptive power as a distribution medium. Pooling together the global tone of all news mentions of a country over time appears to accurately forecast its near–term stability, including predicting the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, conflict in Serbia, and the stability of Saudi Arabia. Location plays a critical role in news reporting, and “passively crowdsourcing” the media to find the locations most closely associated with Bin Laden prior to his capture finds a 200km.–wide swath of northern Pakistan as his most likely hiding place, an area which contains Abbottabad, the city he was ultimately captured in. Finally, the geographic clustering of the news, the way in which it frames localities together, offers new insights into how the world views itself and the “natural civilizations” of the news media.

While heavily biased and far from complete, the news media captures the only cross–national real–time record of human society available to researchers. The findings of this study suggest that Culturomics, which has thus far focused on the digested history of books, can yield intriguing new understandings of human society when applied to the real–time data of news. From forecasting impending conflict to offering insights on the locations of wanted fugitives, applying data mining approaches to the vast historical archive of the news media offers promise of new approaches to measuring and understanding human society on a global scale

Within these instruments for content analysis the unit has ranged from message, to thematic unit, to sentence and complete discussion. Moreover, the validity and theoretical foundation of the majority of instruments available for content analysis have been called into question (De Wever, Schellens, Valcke, & Van Keer, 2006). The discourse analysis of discussion boards in higher education has been closely associated with semantic analysis. The content, whether it be the sentence, the theme or the overall utterance (posting, or overall discussion) is closely related to the generation of new meanings. At a basic level, this would indicate that if students have adopted the semantics, the terminologies, then they have integrated the new concepts, and the learning has taken place. The analysis of large amounts of data available to tutors has led to the development of automatic language treatment software packages where the interaction of students can, for example, be represented visually (Holmes, 2008). Learning management systems have been given advanced tracking functionalities which include not only numbers of postings but also detailed data about pages visited and time spent (…) The analysis of the content of the discussion boards, therefore, moved towards a more semantic labeling of content or propositions.

Susan Herring has developed a specific methodology for online discourse analysis which is called computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) and from a linguistic perspective there is an extension of analysis beyond content to include key features of computer-mediated discourse such as the online community (see Herring, 2004a, 2004b). The methodology is on the surface very similar to traditional types of content analysis that have been mentioned above, however,
although the methodology is language-focused it allows the inclusion of aspects of communication or context which are specifically related to computer-mediated communication.

Many CMC researchers argue that one of the most powerful methods of investigation is content analysis of conference transcripts, and a range of seminal research studies over a decade exists as testament to this (Donnelly & Gardner (2009). Content analysis has provided these researchers with a direct means to understand the processes of learning and teaching, the quality of interactions, and the relationship between interaction and knowledge construction. Despite the perceived benefit of having large volumes of conference data readily available to researchers through the tracking mechanisms in virtual learning environments, recurring criticisms of this method are the lack of a reliable model of content analysis. (Fitzpatrick y Donnelly, 2010)

Entre las herramientas semánticas que vienen vamos a encontrar analizadores de términos frecuentes y de etiquetas que se relacionan con las conversaciones de otros. Sobre Twitter y Facebook no paran de salir. He querido perder un rato con una buscando cómo clasifica las prácticas de la microcomunicación en estas redes.

Encuentro simpáticos los adjetivos con que nos clasifica la matriz de influencia de Klout. Casi parece un horóscopo. Se organiza entorno a cuatro ejes delimitados por las oposiciones: compartir / crear, amplio / focalizado, ocasional o consistente, escucha / participación.
1. En el eje de la aportación de contenidos a públicos La figura del alimentador (Feeder) aporta información a un sector. La del sindicador (Syndicator) selecciona temas o según interés de un público concreto. El difusor (Broadcaster) ofrece más contenido a audiencias también amplias. Y por fin, el curador (Curator) se describe como un administrador experimentado en muchas fuentes y con numerosos lectores.
2. En el eje de la orientación a públicos de contenidos, sitúa abajo al l líder intelectual (Thought Leader) no sólo es conocedor de su campo; también es seguido por su opinión de la realidad presente al alcance de unos lectores que conoce bien. El “degustador” (Taste Maker) es reconocido como indicador de tendencias para un público. El experto (Pundit) es una voz autorizada y ampliamente reconocida en un sector. El famoso (Celebrity) es centro de miradas, foco de atención con el máximo efecto amplificador.
3. En el eje de la focalización y consistencia de los contenidos: El / la socializador/a (Socializer) es una persona de comunidad apreciada por su activa generosidad. El 7 la coordinador de red (Networker) conoces sus grupos y colabora con ellos. A la persona activista se la relaciona además con una causa concreta. Y un especialista obtiene un alto grado de confianza en la selecta audiencia de unos contenidos precisos.
4. Desde la observación distante y una baja atención se definen las figuras periféricas de la conversación en en Twitter y Facebook que analiza Klout. En su punto más activo con la figura de conversador se relaciona con la información de primera mano y precisamente contada. El/la aficionado/a busca en quienes apoyarse para desarrollar su red. El/a explorador/a usa e innova para seguir con las evoluciones actuales. La figura del observador ocupa una posición frenada en la escucha para decidir actuaciones próximas en las redes.

When people look back at the last decade for a technology zeitgeist they may choose SMS, or the iPod, or maybe even Facebook. Me? I’d choose the cellphone call that rings, briefly, and then is silent.
It’s one of those social phenomena that has so embedded itself in the culture that we don’t even notice it. It developed its own syntax, its own meaning, and even shifted the boundaries of cultural mores and social intercourse. Even I didn’t realize it was so widespread until I started researching this article. And yet, at least in the middle of the decade, it spanned all continents and was accounting for more than half of cellphone traffic in many developing countries.
(…)
…the missed call is not some reflection of not having enough credit. Its a medium of exchange of complex messages that has become surprisingly refined in a short period. Much of it is not communication at all, at least in terms of actual information. The interaction is the motivation, not the content of the message itself. Or, as a Filipino professor, Adrian Remodo put it to a language conference in Manila in 2007 at which they voted to make miscall, or miskol in Tagalog, the word of the year: A miskol is often used as “an alternative way to make someone’s presence felt.

Material on the web is ‘diverse’ in other respects too. Because access is egalitarian (with the exception of the remaining biases mentioned earlier), web content is not subject to the ordering and standardizing influence of institutions and the professionals active within them. If you go to a traditional library, by contrast, you enter a space to which information has been admitted only after
undergoing a set of complex vetting procedures, involving authorities such as publishing houses, editors, librarians and academics (see Ryder and Wilson, 1996). By comparison, web space is open, unstructured, and quintessentially anarchic. The scholarly sits side-by-side with the journalistic, the institutional with the personal, the factual with the fictitious. Geographical origin, authorship and communicative intent (and thus genre) are notoriously difficult to establish:
We all know (and may ourselves have voiced) the complaints about online information: there is too much ephemeral content of dubious reliability: journalistic, commercial and personal texts of unknown authorship and authority abound; assertions are intermingled with and represented as established fact, and details of sources and research methodology are documented haphazardly at best. (Fletcher, 2001: 10)
This lack of pre-ordering, and the indiscriminate mixing of voices and genres, probably goes quite a long way towards explaining why critical discourse analysts are often reluctant to mine the web for data. In the absence of gatekeepers, who structure and vet content in the traditional media, the onus falls on the researcher to establish the nature of the data that search engines have laid before him or her, and to select those sources that will be useful in answering specific research questions.

La autora Lisa Spiro agradece sugerencias y modificaciones. De su magnífico wiki Digital Research Tools, DiRT selecciono sólo las aplicaciones gratuitas que operan sobre y con software libre

Mais comment entrer de manière efficace dans ces communautés de goûts, d’affinités, placées sous le signe du partage ? Par quelle stratégie de communication démultiplier quasiment à l’infini la cible visée? Une réponse s’impose: en s’appuyant sur le storytelling, le placement contextuel des valeurs de la marque au cœur d’un programme qui séduit le public. Nous avons déjà, ici, développé notre concept «d’advertainment», du divertissement irrigué par la communication de la marque. Il semble plus judicieux que jamais, lorsqu’il s’agit de pénétrer les réseaux sociaux, dont les membres fonctionnent tout particulièrement à l’affectif, à l’intuition. Ouvrir une page sur Facebook? C’est bien gentil. Mais pour y dire quoi? Y raconter quoi? Quel internaute aura envie de transmettre à ses «amis» du réseau une page d’informations commerciales ennuyeuses? Qui a l’idée de faire circuler autour de lui les prospectus publicitaires qui envahissent sa boîte à lettres? En revanche, si notre “ami” découvre une sitcom amusante, une video fun, un petit film inédit, de quelques clics, il en fera immédiatement profiter son réseau.