Cited by 300Computational and Text Analysis MethodsPolitical Science Research and EducationDigital Humanities and Scholarship

Large-Scale Computerized Text Analysis in Political Science: Opportunities and Challenges

Open access
Wilkerson, John, Casas, Andreu·2017·Annual Review of Political Science

Abstract

Text has always been an important data source in political science. What has changed in recent years is the feasibility of investigating large amounts of text quantitatively. The internet provides political scientists with more data than their mentors could have imagined, and the research community is providing accessible text analysis software packages, along with training and support. As a result, text-as-data research is becoming mainstream in political science. Scholars are tapping new data sources, they are employing more diverse methods, and they are becoming critical consumers of findings based on those methods. In this article, we first describe the four stages of a typical text-as-data project. We then review recent political science applications and explore one important methodological challenge—topic model instability—in greater detail.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1146/annurev-polisci-052615-025542

Cites

64 of 64 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

The text we found for this paper looks like another document, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The text we found for this paper looks like another document, so the self-check wasn’t run.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 65 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Wilkerson, J., & Casas, A.
Affiliations
University of Washington (US)
Venue
Annual Review of Political Science
Published
2017-05-11
Volume
20
Issue
1
Pages
529-544
ISSN
  • 1094-2939 (ISSN-L)
  • 1545-1577
OpenAlex
W2515855575
Cited by
300
References
65
Citations by year
2026: 29 · 2025: 48 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 34 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 2
FWCI
7.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
other-oa
Locations
  • Annual Review of Political Science (publishedVersion)
  • VU Research Portal (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Science Research and Education
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Digital Humanities and Scholarship
Keywords
text-as-data, computational text analysis, topic modeling, online information sources, quantitative text analysis

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Classified by jev-1.13-20260917 (gold-guideline-v0.2) on 2026-10-09.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review