Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/secret/lCOJuveElAXUyl

If you’ve ever had to analyze a set of documents — such as social media posts, open-ended survey responses, focus group transcripts, software logs, etc. — you may have wondered about natural language processing (NLP). NLP is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of algorithmic methods that can be used to automatically analyze large volumes of text.  Read more

In my first post about topic models, I discussed what topic models are, how they work and what their output looks like. The example I used trained a topic model on open-ended responses to a survey question about what makes life feel fulfilling and examined three topics in particular.  Read more

While highly ideological members of Congress tend to use their Facebook posts to criticize political opponents and support their allies, moderate lawmakers are more likely to concentrate on local issues in their outreach on the platform, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis covering Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2017.  Read more

Honesty. Strength. Beauty. What traits does society value most in men and in women? What traits does society say men and women should not have? Last year, Pew Research Center asked 4,573 Americans these questions. The respondents answered with more than 1,500 unique words describing traits that they think society does and doesn’t value for each gender.  Read more

After the 2016 presidential election, Facebook users began using the “angry” button much more often when reacting to posts created by members of Congress.  Read more

Democratic legislators’ opposition to political adversaries on Facebook spiked after Trump’s election, while “angry” reactions to posts by members of Congress increased among followers.  Read more

As disclosures about sexual misconduct emerged last year, 44% of all members of Congress raised the issue on their official Facebook accounts. But the percentage of women legislators who discussed the topic in their official Facebook posts was almost twice as high as the percentage of men in Congress who did so (72% vs. 37%), according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 44,792 posts published between Oct. 1 and Dec. 30, 2017.   Read more

The most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017, according to a new Pew Research Center study that examined all official Facebook posts created by members of Congress in this period. The analysis included links […]  Read more

Political divides in the American news landscape do not end with Americans’ preferences for different news sources; rather, they extend to how members of the U.S. Congress communicate with constituents in the digital age. Read more