Voyant Text Analysis Project
Your mission for this assignment (should you choose to accept it!) is to do some textual analysis of a large corpus of text(s) using Voyant Tools. How you approach this is up to you. Examples of the kinds of text you might examine include, but are not limited to: recipes, song lyrics, blogs posts, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. If you want to do something work-related, you might think about examining policy documents, curriculum documents, etc. Or, you might choose to have some real fun and think up a corpus of text that you never imagined analyzing. The main goal is to demonstrate an effort to really learn what’s possible with Voyant Tools for analyzing and visualizing textual data.
One tip for selecting the corpus of data you will analyze and visualize is that, ideally, there will be multiple documents that can be loaded into Voyant Tools. For example, if you want to analyze music, you might choose an album from an artist. But, you’ll want to add the lyrics from each song separately into the same Voyant project. That will allow you to, among other things, compare across songs within the album. Or, if you are analyzing a poet’s work, you’ll want to upload the poems as separate files.
Voyant Text Analysis Project
As inspiration, here are some examples from past students
· We Can Do Hard Things
· Links to an external site.
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· Celtic Woman 2005-2015 Album Lyrics Analysis
· Links to an external site.
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· Lyrical Showdown: Analyzing Kendrick Lamar’s Diss Tracks Aimed at Drake
· Links to an external site.
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And some inspiration from the New York Times…
· The Word Choices That Explain Why Jane Austen Endures
· Links to an external site.
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You have time to learn how to use Voyant Tools, settle on a corpus to analyze, and work through some analyses. Your final product does not need to be a perfect, refined product. But, you don’t want to just mail it in; really consider what Voyant is showing you as you analyze and visualize the data.
You will need to find a “home” for your project. VCU recently degraded Google Sites, so that’s no longer an option for you. You can, though, use Google Sites if you have a personal Google account. Additionally, you can create a free account at Wix.com and create a single website there. Voyant Tools visualizations can be embedded into Google Sites or a Wix site. You are also free to use any web-based platform that works for you, so long as it can be shared and that it supports iframes (for embedding the Voyant visualizations).
Like everything you do this semester, my greatest hope for you is for you to stretch yourself and to have fun in doing so. This assignment is a great opportunity for you to take Ms. Frizzle’s advice to heart: Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!
Voyant Text Analysis Project
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What corpus of text will you analyze using Voyant Tools?,
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How will you organize your text data for analysis?,
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What patterns or insights does Voyant reveal from your corpus?,
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How do you interpret visualizations (e.g. word clouds trends)?,
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Where will you publish your final project with embedded Voyant results?