Posted by | September 29, 2023

Enhance Your Research Using Text Network Analysis

How to Build on Top of an Existing Discourse

 You can enhance your approach to research using text network analysis. If you have several quotes, citations, or notes you made related to your topic, you can visualize them as a graph, so you can see how it all connects. You will identify the main topics inside and the main communities, see how they are related. 

The next step is to see what you could add to this discourse in such a way that enhances it in the direction, which is still relevant to its main agenda. You can do that by writing the text on top of the already existing one, making the new connections, focusing on closing the structural gaps in the graph. The result is a new discourse, which takes us one step further, adding something new into the graph in a way that is related to the research agenda.

Practice:

Using the graph below try to explore the main topics contained in the selection of notes on ecology. Try to then identify the structural gaps and to see how this discourse could be developed further.

Comments, Feedback, Experiences?

 Please, tell us what you have found out and what features you’d like to have added to this tool?

Connect Your Notes and Ideas Together

You can use text network analysis to analyze all your different notes and ideas and to make sense of them. Using graph visualization you can identify the main topics inside, see how they are connected, what are the key terms you’re using, and in which context. This provides a very informative bird eye’s view on your thought process.

The next step is to see where you can take this discourse further. There is a very useful feature in InfraNodus showing a question to ask. How does this topic relate to that subject? What would happen if we connect them? Answering to this question can show a possible way to develop the research discourse further, identifying the gaps in the discourse and making it more connected.

Practice:

Take your own notes and visualize them as a graph using InfraNodus tool (or the frame below). Try to identify the main topics, see how they connect, get an overview of your thought process.

As the next step, use the “Question to Ask” feature to identify the structural gap in the discourse and ask a question that would make the discourse more connected and coherent.

What did you find out?

I’m not sure how to use the TL;DR feature – how is it different than making a new context?