Workshop at EASST4S 2024 in Amsterdam
Every four years, the major Science and Technology Studies academic societies from Europe and North America, EASST and 4S, gather for a joint meeting. That happened this year, where EASST-4S 2024 [...]
A research infrastructure for the social sciences & humanities
At Cortext, our goal is to empower researchers by promoting advanced qualitative-quantitative mixed methods. Our primary focus is on studies about the dynamics of science, technology and innovation, and about the roles of knowledge and expertise in societies.
We understand the move towards digital humanities and computational methods not as addressing a technological gap for the social sciences, but rather as entailing entirely new assemblages between its disciplines and those of modern statistics and computer sciences. And we work to tackle ever more complex research problems and deal with the profusion of new and diverse sources of information without losing sight of the situatedness and reflexivity required of studies of human societies.
Cortext is hosted by the LISIS research unit at Gustave Eiffel University, and was launched by French institutes IFRIS and INRAE, receiving their continued support.
Cortext Manager
Upload a textual corpus in order to analyse its discourse, names, categories, citations, places, dates etc, with methods for science/controversy/issue mapping, distant reading, document clustering, geo-spatial and network visualizations, and more.
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Latest journal articles employing our instruments
Online
2012
Mogoutov, Andrei; Cointet, Jean-Philippe; Borra, Erik; Stevenson, Michael; Helmond, Anne; Gerlitz, Carolin; Rogers, Richard; Sanchez, Natalia; Venturini, Tommaso; Severo, Marta; Rieder, Bernhard
The Digital Methods Initiative Summerschool 2012 Online
(DMI), The Digital Methods Initiative (Ed.): 2012, visited: 02.07.2012.
@online{Mogoutov2012,
title = {The Digital Methods Initiative Summerschool 2012},
author = {Andrei Mogoutov and Jean-Philippe Cointet and Erik Borra and Michael Stevenson and Anne Helmond and Carolin Gerlitz and Richard Rogers and Natalia Sanchez and Tommaso Venturini and Marta Severo and Bernhard Rieder},
editor = {The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI)},
url = {https://digitalmethods.net/Dmi/Summerschool2012Presentations
https://digitalmethods.net/Dmi/Summerschool2012Schedule
https://digitalmethods.net/Dmi/Summerschool2012Workshops},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-07-02},
urldate = {2012-07-02},
abstract = {The Digital Methods Initiative Summerschool 2012 workshops
Crawling & Scraping
The workshop serves as an introduction to two classic digital methods techniques for issue mapping and analysis. A discussion of the Issue Crawler and the Lippmannian device is followed by a short exercise in which we'll study the presence of skeptics among top sources of information related to climate change.
Tracking the Trackers
In this short workshop you will learn how to map the cookie ecology related to a set of websites using the DMI Tracker Tracker tool and Gephi. The Tracker Tracker tool was conceived at the Digital Methods Winterschool 2012 in January. It is build on top of the anti-tracking plugin www.ghostery.com and allows to identify the invisible web, devices that track user activities online and the services associated to them. In order to prepare for this workshop we recommend reading the related projects and materials listed below. Please download and install Gephi athttps://gephi.org/ before the workshop starts so you can also learn how to visualize your results.
CorText: Open Platform for Heterogeneous Data Collection, Analysis and Visualization
IFRIS Digital Platform has developed a powerful web based software solution to address the needs of social scientists conducting empirical studies in the fields of Media Studies, Science and Technology Studies and Digital Humanities. The software platform CorText is an open online service for heterogeneous data analysis, modeling and visualization. The platform has the ambition to provide powerful data mash-up capacities transforming various data sources to structured analytical database. CorText platform offers a large spectrum of analytical tools integrating methods and approaches coming from Data Mining, computational linguistics, dynamical systems modeling, (post-)network analysis.
Query Design & List Building
How does one build a source set? How does one identify key words? How to query the source sets for the key words?
Actor-Network Textual Analysis (ANTA)
Having its roots in the laboratories studies movement, actor-network theory has always had in ethnography its privileged research method. Still, at least in the words of its founders, ANT has always longed for a more quantitative grasp of its objects. Until recently all the attempts to devise an integrated methodology for actor-network text analysis were frustrated by the scarcity of text to be analyzed. A part from scientific literature and media discourses it was difficult to find large amount of digitized text to investigate. In the last few years, this bottleneck has been spectacularly removed by the advent of electronic media and of digital traceability. The deluge of digitized texts made available online by all sort of actors (institutions, individuals, associations, media, activists, scientists…) calls for new tools of analysis at the same time more user-friendly and more powerful. ANTA or Actor-Network Analyzer is one of such tools. It has been developed at Sciences Po médialab to offer social researchers a simple text-analysis toolkit attuned with the theoretical tenets of actor-network theory.
Working with Networks: Analysis and Visualization (Gephi)
Network analysis has become a common technique for working with various types of data. Especially the gephi graph analysis toolkit has made the method significantly more accessible by providing a relatively easy to use interface for exploring and visualizing graphs. This tutorial will introduce a number of basic concepts from graph theory and explicate them by showing how gephi allows us to work with them.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {online}
}
The Digital Methods Initiative Summerschool 2012 workshops
Crawling & Scraping
The workshop serves as an introduction to two classic digital methods techniques for issue mapping and analysis. A discussion of the Issue Crawler and the Lippmannian device is followed by a short exercise in which we'll study the presence of skeptics among top sources of information related to climate change.
Tracking the Trackers
In this short workshop you will learn how to map the cookie ecology related to a set of websites using the DMI Tracker Tracker tool and Gephi. The Tracker Tracker tool was conceived at the Digital Methods Winterschool 2012 in January. It is build on top of the anti-tracking plugin www.ghostery.com and allows to identify the invisible web, devices that track user activities online and the services associated to them. In order to prepare for this workshop we recommend reading the related projects and materials listed below. Please download and install Gephi athttps://gephi.org/ before the workshop starts so you can also learn how to visualize your results.
CorText: Open Platform for Heterogeneous Data Collection, Analysis and Visualization
IFRIS Digital Platform has developed a powerful web based software solution to address the needs of social scientists conducting empirical studies in the fields of Media Studies, Science and Technology Studies and Digital Humanities. The software platform CorText is an open online service for heterogeneous data analysis, modeling and visualization. The platform has the ambition to provide powerful data mash-up capacities transforming various data sources to structured analytical database. CorText platform offers a large spectrum of analytical tools integrating methods and approaches coming from Data Mining, computational linguistics, dynamical systems modeling, (post-)network analysis.
Query Design & List Building
How does one build a source set? How does one identify key words? How to query the source sets for the key words?
Actor-Network Textual Analysis (ANTA)
Having its roots in the laboratories studies movement, actor-network theory has always had in ethnography its privileged research method. Still, at least in the words of its founders, ANT has always longed for a more quantitative grasp of its objects. Until recently all the attempts to devise an integrated methodology for actor-network text analysis were frustrated by the scarcity of text to be analyzed. A part from scientific literature and media discourses it was difficult to find large amount of digitized text to investigate. In the last few years, this bottleneck has been spectacularly removed by the advent of electronic media and of digital traceability. The deluge of digitized texts made available online by all sort of actors (institutions, individuals, associations, media, activists, scientists…) calls for new tools of analysis at the same time more user-friendly and more powerful. ANTA or Actor-Network Analyzer is one of such tools. It has been developed at Sciences Po médialab to offer social researchers a simple text-analysis toolkit attuned with the theoretical tenets of actor-network theory.
Working with Networks: Analysis and Visualization (Gephi)
Network analysis has become a common technique for working with various types of data. Especially the gephi graph analysis toolkit has made the method significantly more accessible by providing a relatively easy to use interface for exploring and visualizing graphs. This tutorial will introduce a number of basic concepts from graph theory and explicate them by showing how gephi allows us to work with them.
Crawling & Scraping
The workshop serves as an introduction to two classic digital methods techniques for issue mapping and analysis. A discussion of the Issue Crawler and the Lippmannian device is followed by a short exercise in which we'll study the presence of skeptics among top sources of information related to climate change.
Tracking the Trackers
In this short workshop you will learn how to map the cookie ecology related to a set of websites using the DMI Tracker Tracker tool and Gephi. The Tracker Tracker tool was conceived at the Digital Methods Winterschool 2012 in January. It is build on top of the anti-tracking plugin www.ghostery.com and allows to identify the invisible web, devices that track user activities online and the services associated to them. In order to prepare for this workshop we recommend reading the related projects and materials listed below. Please download and install Gephi athttps://gephi.org/ before the workshop starts so you can also learn how to visualize your results.
CorText: Open Platform for Heterogeneous Data Collection, Analysis and Visualization
IFRIS Digital Platform has developed a powerful web based software solution to address the needs of social scientists conducting empirical studies in the fields of Media Studies, Science and Technology Studies and Digital Humanities. The software platform CorText is an open online service for heterogeneous data analysis, modeling and visualization. The platform has the ambition to provide powerful data mash-up capacities transforming various data sources to structured analytical database. CorText platform offers a large spectrum of analytical tools integrating methods and approaches coming from Data Mining, computational linguistics, dynamical systems modeling, (post-)network analysis.
Query Design & List Building
How does one build a source set? How does one identify key words? How to query the source sets for the key words?
Actor-Network Textual Analysis (ANTA)
Having its roots in the laboratories studies movement, actor-network theory has always had in ethnography its privileged research method. Still, at least in the words of its founders, ANT has always longed for a more quantitative grasp of its objects. Until recently all the attempts to devise an integrated methodology for actor-network text analysis were frustrated by the scarcity of text to be analyzed. A part from scientific literature and media discourses it was difficult to find large amount of digitized text to investigate. In the last few years, this bottleneck has been spectacularly removed by the advent of electronic media and of digital traceability. The deluge of digitized texts made available online by all sort of actors (institutions, individuals, associations, media, activists, scientists…) calls for new tools of analysis at the same time more user-friendly and more powerful. ANTA or Actor-Network Analyzer is one of such tools. It has been developed at Sciences Po médialab to offer social researchers a simple text-analysis toolkit attuned with the theoretical tenets of actor-network theory.
Working with Networks: Analysis and Visualization (Gephi)
Network analysis has become a common technique for working with various types of data. Especially the gephi graph analysis toolkit has made the method significantly more accessible by providing a relatively easy to use interface for exploring and visualizing graphs. This tutorial will introduce a number of basic concepts from graph theory and explicate them by showing how gephi allows us to work with them.
Books
2011
Demortain, David
Scientists and the Regulation of Risk: Standardising Control Book
Edward Elgar Publishing, Incorporated, 2011, ISBN: 9781849809443.
@book{Demortain2011,
title = {Scientists and the Regulation of Risk: Standardising Control},
author = {David Demortain},
url = {https://books.google.fr/books?id=yzHDiMfTtuwC},
isbn = {9781849809443},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-10-01},
urldate = {2011-10-01},
publisher = {Edward Elgar Publishing, Incorporated},
abstract = {Risks are increasingly regulated by international standards, and scientists play a key role in standardisation. This fascinating book exposes the action of "invisible colleges" of scientists –loose groups of prominent scientific experts who combine practical experience of risk and control with advisory responsibility – in the formulation of international standards. Drawing upon the domains of medicines, "novel foods" and food hygiene, the author investigates new regulatory concepts emerging from invisible colleges, highlighting how they shape consensus and pave the way for international standards. He explores the relationship between science and regulation from theoretic and historic perspectives, and illustrates how scientific experts integrate regulatory actors in commonly agreed modes of control and structures of regulatory responsibilities. Sociological and political implications are also discussed. Using innovative methodologies and an extensive insight into food and pharmaceutical regulation, this book will provide a much-needed reference tool for scholars and students in a range of fields encompassing science and technology studies, public policy, risk and environmental regulation, and transnational governance.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {book}
}
Risks are increasingly regulated by international standards, and scientists play a key role in standardisation. This fascinating book exposes the action of "invisible colleges" of scientists –loose groups of prominent scientific experts who combine practical experience of risk and control with advisory responsibility – in the formulation of international standards. Drawing upon the domains of medicines, "novel foods" and food hygiene, the author investigates new regulatory concepts emerging from invisible colleges, highlighting how they shape consensus and pave the way for international standards. He explores the relationship between science and regulation from theoretic and historic perspectives, and illustrates how scientific experts integrate regulatory actors in commonly agreed modes of control and structures of regulatory responsibilities. Sociological and political implications are also discussed. Using innovative methodologies and an extensive insight into food and pharmaceutical regulation, this book will provide a much-needed reference tool for scholars and students in a range of fields encompassing science and technology studies, public policy, risk and environmental regulation, and transnational governance.
Conferences
2011
Parasie, Sylvain; Cointet, Jean-Philippe; Dagiral, Eric
2011, (oai:HAL:hal-00675970v1).
@conference{Parasie2011,
title = {La presse en ligne au service de la démocratie locale. LaVoixduNord.fr dans les élections municipales de 2008},
author = {Sylvain Parasie and Jean-Philippe Cointet and Eric Dagiral},
url = {https://sypar.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/pres_afs_vdn-7juillet11.pdf},
year = {2011},
date = {2011-07-07},
school = {Université Paris Est - IFRIS},
abstract = {Rôle démocratique de la presse en ligne
• discours optimistes : connaissance politique, participation civique
• études empiriques sceptiques : imitation (Boczkowski, 2010), recul de l’investigation, fractionnement du travail (Quandt, 2009)
Question controversée dans le cas de la presse locale
• analyses critiques : collusion élus/localiers, dépolitisation et journalisme de service
• études plus nuancées : Lemieux (2000), Frisque (2010)},
note = {oai:HAL:hal-00675970v1},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}
Rôle démocratique de la presse en ligne
• discours optimistes : connaissance politique, participation civique
• études empiriques sceptiques : imitation (Boczkowski, 2010), recul de l’investigation, fractionnement du travail (Quandt, 2009)
Question controversée dans le cas de la presse locale
• analyses critiques : collusion élus/localiers, dépolitisation et journalisme de service
• études plus nuancées : Lemieux (2000), Frisque (2010)
• discours optimistes : connaissance politique, participation civique
• études empiriques sceptiques : imitation (Boczkowski, 2010), recul de l’investigation, fractionnement du travail (Quandt, 2009)
Question controversée dans le cas de la presse locale
• analyses critiques : collusion élus/localiers, dépolitisation et journalisme de service
• études plus nuancées : Lemieux (2000), Frisque (2010)
2010
Tari, Thomas; Caron, Pauline; Breucker, Philippe; Barbier, Marc
2010, (ENID 2010 - Methods and techniques for the exploitation of heterogeneous data sources).
@conference{Tari2010,
title = {Characterising the Localisation of Projects Collaborations in Research Dynamics: methodological requirements and results for new visualisations of heterogeneous networks},
author = {Thomas Tari and Pauline Caron and Philippe Breucker and Marc Barbier},
url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262494844_Characterising_the_Localisation_of_Projects_Collaborations_in_Research_Dynamics_methodological_requirements_and_results_for_new_visualisations_of_heterogeneous_networks
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philippe-Breucker/publication/262494844_Characterising_the_Localisation_of_Projects_Collaborations_in_Research_Dynamics_methodological_requirements_and_results_for_new_visualisations_of_heterogeneous_networks/links/00b49537de9a036323000000/Characterising-the-Localisation-of-Projects-Collaborations-in-Research-Dynamics-methodological-requirements-and-results-for-new-visualisations-of-heterogeneous-networks.pdf},
year = {2010},
date = {2010-01-01},
abstract = {This communication proposes to discuss the construction of methodological requirements on databases building and software development, and aspires to show some concrete results in visualising heterogeneous networks of research dynamics considered through projects ecology.
Our reflection is grounded in the growing needs, either for decision makers or researchers of the STS and SPS communities to relay their analysis of facts on a convenient visualisation of structural relationships between heterogeneous actants. Their configuration in dedicated databases is worthy to focus on as they reflect the endogenous dynamics of research and R&D activities. Our hypothesis is that the aims, perimeter, contents and selected projects of funding programmes represent a relevant account of the un‐going technological and scientific dynamic on the one hand, and a relevant account of the mobilization and choices of scientific communities and science policy “makers” on the other hand. Those configurations rely firmly on spatial‐based organizations, mixing European, national and regional scales in formal and informal clusters. Our perspective in the CorTexT Platform of IFRIS is to enrich the studies of sciences dynamics on customized databases of research and R&D projects that represent Dthrough territories performative associations of laboratories, scientific teams, R&D firms and lead‐users.
Without ignoring the existence of a large array of scientific perspectives in Information Sciences about the measurement of science productions and science dynamics, we situate our work in the branch of analysis and visualisation of social networks. This field as well as indicators are central for evaluation and policy of science (Callon et al., 1986; Law et al., 1988). At present, the evolution of the analysis of scientific networks is largely attached to the question of characterizing collaborative and cognitive dynamics of knowledge production (Powell et al., 2005) and to the emergence of multi or trans‐disciplinary emerging fields of research (Lucio‐Arias, Leydesdorff, 2007) or paradigmatic field of research (Chavalarias, Cointet, 2008). Tracing and mapping knowledge in scientific database or in other electronic sources still represents a huge field of problems for many disciplines dealing with information. More locally, in relation to specific area of research, mapping heterogeneous networks appears to help the understanding of social dynamic of research activities (Cambrosio, Keating, Mogoutov, 2004; Cambrosio et al., 2006; Bourret et al., 2006).
Using co‐word analysis tools (RéseauLu), we have already proposed a social study focused on regime of knowledge production in agricultural science and on the significance of sustainability (Barbier, Mogoutov et al., 2008). We identified two emergent yet lively research themes: biofuels and vegetal fibres, and realized specific bibliometrical studies on those subjects. We then devoted sociological studies based on heterogeneous sources to fibres (Caron et Barbier 2009) and biofuel & bioenergy research (Tari 2009). Bearing in mind this type of overall view on scientific knowledge we wanted to develop an approach on research projects in those domains.},
note = {ENID 2010 - Methods and techniques for the exploitation of heterogeneous data sources},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}
This communication proposes to discuss the construction of methodological requirements on databases building and software development, and aspires to show some concrete results in visualising heterogeneous networks of research dynamics considered through projects ecology.
Our reflection is grounded in the growing needs, either for decision makers or researchers of the STS and SPS communities to relay their analysis of facts on a convenient visualisation of structural relationships between heterogeneous actants. Their configuration in dedicated databases is worthy to focus on as they reflect the endogenous dynamics of research and R&D activities. Our hypothesis is that the aims, perimeter, contents and selected projects of funding programmes represent a relevant account of the un‐going technological and scientific dynamic on the one hand, and a relevant account of the mobilization and choices of scientific communities and science policy “makers” on the other hand. Those configurations rely firmly on spatial‐based organizations, mixing European, national and regional scales in formal and informal clusters. Our perspective in the CorTexT Platform of IFRIS is to enrich the studies of sciences dynamics on customized databases of research and R&D projects that represent Dthrough territories performative associations of laboratories, scientific teams, R&D firms and lead‐users.
Without ignoring the existence of a large array of scientific perspectives in Information Sciences about the measurement of science productions and science dynamics, we situate our work in the branch of analysis and visualisation of social networks. This field as well as indicators are central for evaluation and policy of science (Callon et al., 1986; Law et al., 1988). At present, the evolution of the analysis of scientific networks is largely attached to the question of characterizing collaborative and cognitive dynamics of knowledge production (Powell et al., 2005) and to the emergence of multi or trans‐disciplinary emerging fields of research (Lucio‐Arias, Leydesdorff, 2007) or paradigmatic field of research (Chavalarias, Cointet, 2008). Tracing and mapping knowledge in scientific database or in other electronic sources still represents a huge field of problems for many disciplines dealing with information. More locally, in relation to specific area of research, mapping heterogeneous networks appears to help the understanding of social dynamic of research activities (Cambrosio, Keating, Mogoutov, 2004; Cambrosio et al., 2006; Bourret et al., 2006).
Using co‐word analysis tools (RéseauLu), we have already proposed a social study focused on regime of knowledge production in agricultural science and on the significance of sustainability (Barbier, Mogoutov et al., 2008). We identified two emergent yet lively research themes: biofuels and vegetal fibres, and realized specific bibliometrical studies on those subjects. We then devoted sociological studies based on heterogeneous sources to fibres (Caron et Barbier 2009) and biofuel & bioenergy research (Tari 2009). Bearing in mind this type of overall view on scientific knowledge we wanted to develop an approach on research projects in those domains.
Our reflection is grounded in the growing needs, either for decision makers or researchers of the STS and SPS communities to relay their analysis of facts on a convenient visualisation of structural relationships between heterogeneous actants. Their configuration in dedicated databases is worthy to focus on as they reflect the endogenous dynamics of research and R&D activities. Our hypothesis is that the aims, perimeter, contents and selected projects of funding programmes represent a relevant account of the un‐going technological and scientific dynamic on the one hand, and a relevant account of the mobilization and choices of scientific communities and science policy “makers” on the other hand. Those configurations rely firmly on spatial‐based organizations, mixing European, national and regional scales in formal and informal clusters. Our perspective in the CorTexT Platform of IFRIS is to enrich the studies of sciences dynamics on customized databases of research and R&D projects that represent Dthrough territories performative associations of laboratories, scientific teams, R&D firms and lead‐users.
Without ignoring the existence of a large array of scientific perspectives in Information Sciences about the measurement of science productions and science dynamics, we situate our work in the branch of analysis and visualisation of social networks. This field as well as indicators are central for evaluation and policy of science (Callon et al., 1986; Law et al., 1988). At present, the evolution of the analysis of scientific networks is largely attached to the question of characterizing collaborative and cognitive dynamics of knowledge production (Powell et al., 2005) and to the emergence of multi or trans‐disciplinary emerging fields of research (Lucio‐Arias, Leydesdorff, 2007) or paradigmatic field of research (Chavalarias, Cointet, 2008). Tracing and mapping knowledge in scientific database or in other electronic sources still represents a huge field of problems for many disciplines dealing with information. More locally, in relation to specific area of research, mapping heterogeneous networks appears to help the understanding of social dynamic of research activities (Cambrosio, Keating, Mogoutov, 2004; Cambrosio et al., 2006; Bourret et al., 2006).
Using co‐word analysis tools (RéseauLu), we have already proposed a social study focused on regime of knowledge production in agricultural science and on the significance of sustainability (Barbier, Mogoutov et al., 2008). We identified two emergent yet lively research themes: biofuels and vegetal fibres, and realized specific bibliometrical studies on those subjects. We then devoted sociological studies based on heterogeneous sources to fibres (Caron et Barbier 2009) and biofuel & bioenergy research (Tari 2009). Bearing in mind this type of overall view on scientific knowledge we wanted to develop an approach on research projects in those domains.
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