We describe some of the ways that the field of content analysis is being transformed in an Era of Big Data. We argue that content analysis, from its beginning, has been concerned with extracting the main meanings of a text and mapping those meanings onto the space of a textual corpus. In contrast, we suggest that the emergence of new styles of text mining tools is creating an opportunity to develop a different kind of content analysis that we describe as (...) a computational hermeneutics. Here the goal is to go beyond a mapping of the main meaning of a text to mimic the kinds of questions and concerns that have traditionally been the focus of a hermeneutically grounded close reading, a reading that focuses on what Kenneth Burke described as the poetic meanings of a text. We illustrate this approach by referring to our own work concerning the rhetorical character of US National Security Strategy documents. (shrink)

This volume shows how nanotechnology takes on a wide range of socio-historically specific meanings in the context of globalization, across multiple localities, institutions and collaborations, through diverse industries, research labs, and government agencies and in a variety of discussions within the public sphere itself. It explores the early origins of nanotechnologies; the social, economic, and political organization of the field; and the cultural and subjective meanings ascribed to nanotechnologies in social settings.

What is the role of measurement in the sociology of culture and how can we sort out the complexities that distinguish qualitative from quantitative approaches to this domain? In this article, we compare the issues and concerns of contemporary scholars who work on matters of culture with the writings of a group of scholars who had prepared papers for a special symposium on scientific measurement held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) back (...) in 1956. We focus on three issues—the recurring need to reinvent measurement (as illustrated by the career of the psychologist S.S. Stevens), the linkage between qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis (as articulated in the writings of the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld), and the assertion (by philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Peter Caws) that theorizing necessarily precedes measuring. We review a number of important advances in the way that measurement is theorized and implemented in the sociology of culture and we also point to a number of enduring dilemmas and conundrums that continue to occupy researchers in the field today. (shrink)

Although a central construct for sociologists, the concept of institution continues to elude clear and full specification. One reason for this lack of clarity is that about 50 years ago empirical researchers in the field of sociology turned their gaze downward, away from macro-sociological constructs in order to focus their attention on middle-range empirical projects. It took almost 20 years for the concept of the institution to work its back onto the empirical research agenda of mainstream sociologists. The new institutional (...) project in organizational sociology led the way. Since then, scholars in this tradition have achieved a great deal but there is still much more to accomplish. Here, future directions for research are considered by reviewing how the concept of the institution has come to be treated by mainstream philosophers, sociologists of science and technology studies, and social network theorists. (shrink)