Network Text Analysis in Computer-Intensive Rapid Ethnography Retrieval: An Example from Political Networks of Sudan* Laurent Tambayong California State University at Fullerton;
[email protected] Kathleen M. Carley Carnegie Mellon University;
[email protected] Abstract: Advances in text analysis, particularly the ability to extract network based information from texts, is enabling researches to conduct detailed socio-cultural ethnographies rapidly by retrieving characteristic descriptions from texts and fusing the results from varied sources. We describe this process and illustrate it in the context of conflict in the Sudan. We show how network information can be extracted from vast quantities of unstructured texts-based information using computer assisted processes. This is illustrated by an examination of changes in the political networks in Sudan as extracted from the Sudan Tribune. We find that this approach enables rapid high level assessment of a socio-cultural environment, generates results that are viewed as accurate by subject matter experts, and match actual historical events. The relative value of this socio-cultural analysis approach is discussed. Keywords: social networks; text mining; network text analysis; rapid ethnography retrieval (RER); Sudan _________________________ *This work is part of the Rapid Ethnographic Retrieval project at the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) of the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University (under a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant, number N00014-08-1-1186. Additional support was provided by CASOS, the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Office of Naval Research, or the U.S.