Speaker:

Oscar Stuhler, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University

Title:

Studying Textual Representations of Social Structures

Abstract:

Textual data contain rich accounts of actions taken by different actors, of relationships, and of particular identities’ attributes. In other words, texts contain representations of social structures. Sociology has a long tradition of formally studying such structures. However, with the embrace of computational text analysis, sociologists' focus has shifted from grammar-based approaches to ones based on co-occurrence, such as word embeddings. Time to bring grammar back in! In this talk, I will first present a framework for extracting grammatically structured information like the above from text. I then show how this allows us to study larger discursive patterns by presenting both past and ongoing research. In particular, I will be talking about gender and agency in fiction writing (1850-2010) and contending conceptions of refugees in German news. I will close with some work in progress that leverages generative large language models to extend this ongoing research program.

Speaker Bio:

Oscar Stuhler is a sociologist studying discourse with formal, quantitative methods. Much of his work focuses on how to measure, analyze, and theorize textual representations of social structures. Oscar is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University’s Department of Sociology. He completed his PhD in sociology at New York University.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/93590489365
Passcode: NICO24

About the Speaker Series:

Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.

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