Artificial intelligence and content analysis: Problems of and strategies for computer text analysis

Computer technology offers a possibility of reducing the tedium inherent in content analysis. To interpret natural language automatically, a computer program must be able to unravel the syntactic structure of sentences & to trace their meaning by using textual context, prior knowledge, & semantic variability. Several approaches to enable computer programs to perform these tasks are discussed, including approaches from the fields of cognitive psychology & artificial intelligence. While it is still impossible for computer programs to perform all these tasks, it is possible to use them to support human coders in both the coding & the data analysis stages of content analysis. 1 Table, 3 Figures, 34 References. Modified HA