The Dangerous Art of Text Mining
A Methodology for Digital History

Shows how text mining - the art of counting words over time - spurs insights into politics, culture, and historical change.

Jo Guldi (Author)

9781009262989, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 October 2023

496 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.1 cm, 0.85 kg

'This book offers stimulating, accessible reflections on the potential of text mining in historical studies and, above all, a confident, convincing plea for the importance of the core competencies of historians in the data world of our time.' Simon Specht, H-Soz-Kult

The Dangerous Art of Text Mining celebrates the bold new research now possible because of text mining: the art of counting words over time. However, this book also presents a warning: without help from the humanities, data science can distort the past and lead to perilous errors. The book opens with a rogue's gallery of errors, then tours the ground-breaking analyses that have resulted from collaborations between humanists and data scientists. Jo Guldi explores how text mining can give a glimpse of the changing history of the past - for example, how quickly Americans forgot the history of slavery. Textual data can even prove who was responsible in Congress for silencing environmentalism over recent decades. The book ends with an impassioned vision of what text mining in defence of democracy would look like, and why humanists need to be involved.

Introduction
Part I. A Ropes Course for Exploring the Territory: 1. Why textual data from the past is dangerous
2. From fantasy to engagement
3. Words are keys and words are barriers
4. Critical search, a theory
5. To predict or to describe?
Part II. The Many Windows of the House of the Past: 6. The many windows of the house of the past
7. Of memory
8. The distinctiveness of certain eras
9. The measure of influence
10. Of rock and fire
11. Whither modernity
12. What computers can explain and when to stop: a case study in the political history of climate change
Part III. Critical Thinking with Data Makes Stronger Disciplines: 13. A world map of culture, purged of bias
14. The future of the art.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Historiography [HBAH], History: theory & methods [HBA], History [HB]