Cox wrote:
The ability to scour the web automatically brings with it the challenge of dealing with all the data. So, another relevant question to this thread is, what are the automation tools (if any) that people are using for, say, content analysis?
I personally use a lot of software to aide me in analysis. I put an overview of this software here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/research/software/index.html Another good place to start is: http://www.textanalysis.info/ But since you ask about "automatic tools", I linked the "automatic concept mappers" I am aware of here: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/research/software/stats.html#map I tried out several of those programs. The good thing about them: they are very fast: If they produce useless results, you haven't lost much time. If they do: Great! The bad thing: They have not really been been assessed using traditional content analytical criteria, as far as I know. I know only of one exception, a (in my view very useful) paper about Leximancer forthcoming in "Behavior Research Methods". Maybe there are others, but I don't know about them. So, for now I use them as a heuristic device, rather than as "analysis". You probably would need to give more details, about what you understand under "content analysis", if you would like more pointed suggestions. Thomas -- thomas koenig, ph.d. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/staff/thomas/