Introduction to Discourse Network Analysis (DNA)

Political actors typically include organisations (interest groups, political parties, government agencies etc.) or individual persons (legislators, celebrities etc.). These actors make statements about policy instruments, solution concepts, narratives, frames, issues, arguments etc. in the media or other arenas, and these statements are temporally and cross-sectionally interdependent. Actors build coalitions in a debate by reinforcing each other’s statements or making similar statements, and they frequently contradict each other over time among these coalitions.

The goal of discourse network analysis is to explore, describe, and draw inferences about these processes, based on text data and based on a manual qualitative coding in combination with quantitative social network analysis. The short course will first introduce a few examples from the literature on discourse networks, define the key concepts, and discuss theoretical frameworks that are compatible with the methodological approach of discourse network analysis. I will introduce the software Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) 2.0 in a hands-on computer lab session, and after demonstrating the coding process, we will proceed to analyse the resulting network data in external network analysis software packages.

Pre-requisites: Familiarity with Network Theory or have attended workshop 5 (Network Analysis for Social Scientists)

Attendance at this event is free of charge but booking is essential as space is limited.

Registration is open now via My Career Zone.