Information mining — Reflections on recent advancements and the road ahead in data, text, and media mining

In this introduction, we briefly summarize the state of data and text mining today. Taking a very broad view, we use the term information mining to refer to the organization and analysis of structured or unstructured data that can be quantitative, textual, and/or pictorial in nature. The key question, in our view, is, “How can we transform data (in the very broad sense of this term) into ‘ actionable knowledge’, knowledge that we can use in pursuit of a specified objective(s).” After detailing a set of key components of information mining, we introduce each of the papers in this volume and detail the focus of their contributions.