Measuring the Meaning of Words in Contexts: An automated analysis of controversies about ‘Monarch butterflies,’ ‘Frankenfoods,’ and ‘stem cells’

Leydesdorff, Loet and Hellsten, Iina (2006) Measuring the Meaning of Words in Contexts: An automated analysis of controversies about ‘Monarch butterflies,’ ‘Frankenfoods,’ and ‘stem cells’.

Full text available as:
HTM
PDF - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

Abstract

Published in Scientometrics 67(2), 2006, 231-258. Abstract: Co-words have been considered as carriers of meaning across different domains in studies of science, technology, and society. Words and co-words, however, obtain meaning in sentences, and sentences obtain meaning in their contexts of use. At the science/society interface, words can be expected to have different meanings: the codes of communication that provide meaning to words differ on the varying sides of the interface. Furthermore, meanings and interfaces may change over time. Given this structuring of meaning across interfaces and over time, we distinguish between metaphors and diaphors as reflexive mechanisms that facilitate the translation between contexts. Our empirical focus is on three recent scientific controversies: Monarch butterflies, Frankenfoods, and stem-cell therapies. This study explores new avenues that relate the study of co-word analysis in context with the sociological quest for the analysis and processing of meaning.

EPrint Type:	Preprint
Keywords:	Codification; Translation; Mapping; Metaphor; Co-words; Interfaces
Subjects:	Science Technology Studies
ID Code:	1491
Deposited On:	21 September 2006
Alternative Locations:	http://www.leydesdorff.net/meaning/index.htm
Eprint Statistics:	View statistics for this eprint
Tell A Colleague:	Tell a colleague about it.

Ahlgren, P., B. Jarneving, & R. Rousseau. (2003). Requirement for a Cocitation Similarity Measure, with Special Reference to Pearson's Correlation Coefficient. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(6), 550-560.

Bailón-Moreno, R., E. Jurado-Almeda, R. Ruiz-Baños, & J.-P. Courtial. (2005). Analysis of the Field of Physical Chemistry of Surfactants with the United Scientometric Model: Fit of Relational and Activity Indicators. Scientometrics, 63(2), 259-276.

Bar-Hillel, Y. (1955), An Examination of Information Theory. Phil. Sci., 22, 86-105.

Bar-Ilan, J. (2001), Data Collection Methods on the Web for Informetric Purposes—A Review and Analysis. Scientometrics, 50(1): 7-32.

Bernstein, B. (1971), Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 1: Theoretical Studies in the Sociology of Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Brillouin, L. (1962), Science and Information Theory. New York: Academic Press.

Bookstein, A., S. T. Klein, & T. Raita. (1995). Detecting Content-Bearing Words by Serial Clustering. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. Seattle, WA: ACM Press.

Burt, R. S. (1982), Toward a Structural Theory of Action. New York, etc.: Academic Press.

Burt, R. S. (1983). Network Data from Archival Records. In R. S. Burt & M. J. Minor (Eds.), Applied Network Analysis: A Methodological Introduction (pp. 158-174). Beverly Hills, etc.: Sage.

Callon, M, J. P. Courtial & F. Laville (1991), Co-Word Analysis as a Tool for Describing the Network of Interactions between Basic and Technological research: The Case of Polymer Chemistry. Scientometrics 22(1), 155-205.

Callon, M., J. Law, & A. Rip (Eds.). (1986), Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology. London: Macmillan.

Callon, M., J.-P. Courtial, W. A. Turner, & S. Bauin. (1983), From Translations to Problematic Networks: An Introduction to Co-Word Analysis. Social Science Information 22: 191-235.

Chen, Ch. (2003), Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization. London: Springer.

Condit, C., B. Bates, R. Galloway, S. Brown Givens, C. Haynie, J. Jordan, G. Stables & H. Marshall West (2002), Recipes or Blueprints for Our Genes? How Contexts Selectively Activate the Multiple Meanings of Metaphors. Quarterly Journal of Speech 88(3), 303-325.

Coser, R. L. (1975), The Complexity of Roles as a Seedbed of Individual Autonomy. In L. A. Coser (Ed.), The Idea of Social Structure. Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton (pp. 237-264). New York/Chicago: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner (2002), The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. Basic Books.

Fry, J. (2006). Scholarly Research and Information Practices: A Domain Analytic Approach. Information Processing and Management, 42(1), 299-316.

Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.

Hamers, L., Y. Hemeryck, G. Herweyers, M. Janssen, H. Keters, R. Rousseau, et al. (1989). Similarity Measures in Scientometric Research: The Jaccard Index Versus Salton's Cosine Formula. Information Processing & Management, 25(3), 315-318.

Hellsten, I. (2003), Focus on Metaphors: The case of ‘Frankenfood’ on the web. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8(4) July. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol8/issue4/hellsten.html

Hellsten, I., L. Leydesdorff, & P. Wouters. (forthcoming). Multiple Presents: How Search Engines Re-Write the Past. New Media & Society, In print.

Jakulin, A., & I. Bratko. (2004). Quantifying and Visualizing Attribute Interactions: An Approach Based on Entropy, at http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.AI/0308002

Jones, W. P., & Furnas, G. W. (1987). Pictures of Relevance: A Geometric Analysis of Similarity Measures. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36(6), 420-442.

Kamada, T., & S. Kawai. (1989). An Algorithm for Drawing General Undirected Graphs. Information Processing Letters, 31(1), 7-15.

Kennedy, G. (1998), An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics. London: Longman.

Kim, S., D. A. Scheufele, & J. E. Shanahan (2002), Agenda-Setting, Priming, Framing and Second-Levels in Local Politics. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 79(1): 7-25.

Klein, H. (2004), Overview on Standardised Category Systems in Computed aided Content Analysis. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Logic and Methodology. Amsterdam, August 16-20, 2004.

Krippendorff, K. (1980), Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson (1980), Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Latour, B. (1996), Aramis, or the Love of Technology. Harvard University Press.

Leydesdorff, L. & I. Hellsten (2005), Metaphors and Diaphors in Science Communication: Mapping the case of ‘stem-cell research’, Science Communication 27(1): 64-99.

Leydesdorff, L. (1989), Words and Co-Words as Indicators of Intellectual Organization. Research Policy, 18: 209-223.

Leydesdorff, L. (1991),. In search of epistemic networks, Social Studies of Science 21: 75-110.

Leydesdorff, L. (1992), A validation study of LEXIMAPPE, Scientometrics 25: 295-312.

Leydesdorff, L. (1996), Luhmann's Sociological Theory: Its Operationalization and Future Perspectives. Social Science Information 35, 283-306.

Leydesdorff, L. (1997), Why Words and Co-Words Cannot Map the Development of the Sciences. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(5): 418-427.

Leydesdorff, L. (2003). The Mutual Information of University-Industry-Government Relations: An Indicator of the Triple Helix Dynamics. Scientometrics, 58(2), 445-467.

Leydesdorff, L. (2004), The University-Industry Knowledge Relationship: Analyzing Patents and the Science Base of Technologies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 55(11): 991-1001.

Leydesdorff, L. (2005), Visualization of the Citation Impact Environments of Scientific Journals: An online mapping exercise, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), October 2005, Pasadena, CA.

Leydesdorff, L., & L. Vaughan. (forthcoming). Co-occurrence Matrices and Their Applications in Information Science: Extending ACA to the Web Environment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, In Print.

Losey, J. E., L. S. Rayor, M. E. Carter (1999). ‘Transgenic Pollen harms monarch larvae.’ Nature 399:214, 20 May 1999.

Luhmann, N. (1984), Soziale Systeme. Grundriß einer Allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

Luhmann, N. (1986), The Autopoiesis of Social Systems. In F. Geyer & J. v. d. Zouwen (Eds.), Sociocybernetic Paradoxes (pp. 172-192). London: Sage.

Luhmann, N. (1990), The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and a Reality that Remains Unknown. In W. Krohn, G. Küppers & H. Nowotny (Eds.), Selforganization. Portrait of a Scientific Revolution (pp. 64-85). Dordrecht: Reidel.

Maasen, S. & P. Weingart (1995), Metaphors -- Messengers of Meaning. A Contribution to an Evolutionary Sociology of Science. Science Communication 17 (1): 9-31.

Maasen, S. & P. Weingart (2000), Metaphors and the Dynamics of Knowledge. London and New York: Routledge.

MacKay, D. M. (1969), Information, Mechanism and Meaning. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.

Mackenzie, A. (2001), The Technicity of Time. Time & Society, 10(2/3): 235-257.

McInerney, C., N. Bird & M. Nucci (2004), The Flow of Scientific Knowledge from the Lab to the Lay Public. The Case of Genetically Modified Food. Science Communication 26(1): 44-74.

Michelet, B. (1988). L'analyse des associations. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, Université Paris VII, Paris.

Mitroff, I. I. (1974), The Subjective Side of Science. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Nisbet, M. C., D. Brossard, & A. Kroepsch (2003), Framing Science: The Stem Cell Controversy in an Age of Press/Politics. Press/Politics, 8(2): 36-70.

Nucci, M. (2004), From Science Article to the Public Press: A Case Study of Frames and Rhetoric. Paper presented at the ICA conference, New Orleans, USA, May 26-31, 2004.

Osgood, C. E., G. Suci, & P. Tannenbaum (1957), The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Pan, Z., & G. M. Kosicki (1993), Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse. Political communication, 10, 55-76.

Rikken, F. (1998). Adverse Drug Reactions in a Different Context. State University Groningen, Groningen.

Rikken, F., H. A. L. Jiers, & R. Vos. (1995). Mapping the Dynamics of Adverse Drug Reactions in Subsequent Time Periods using INDSCAL. Scientometrics, 33(3), 367-380.

Rousseau, R. (1999), Daily Time Series of Common Single Word Searches in Altavista and Northernlight,. Cybermetrics 2/3, Paper 2 at <http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v2i1p2.html>.

Ruiz-Baños, R., R. Bailón-Moreno, E. Jiménez-Contreras & J.-P. Courtial (1999), Structure and Dynamics of Scientific Networks. Part I: Fundamentals of the Quantitative Model of Translation. Scientometrics 44(2). 217-234.

Salton, G., & M. J. McGill (1983), Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval. Auckland, etc.: McGraw-Hill.

Stegmann, J. & Grohmann, G. (2003), Hypothesis generation guided by co-word clustering. Scientometrics 56(1), 111-135.

Swanson, D. R. (1990). Medical Literature as a Potential Source of New Knowledge, Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 78, 29-37.

Swanson, D. R., & N. R. Smalheiser (1999). Implicit Text Linkages between Medline Records: Using Arrowsmith as an Aid to Scientific Discovery. Library Trends, 48, 48-59.

Teil, G. & Latour, B. (1995), The Hume machine. Can association networks do more than formal rules? Stanford Electronic Humanities Review 4(2). Available at http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/teil-latour.html .

Theil, H. (1972), Statistical Decomposition Analysis. Amsterdam/ London: North-Holland.

Thelwall, M. (2001), The Responsiveness of Search Engine Indexes. Cybermetrics, 5(1), http://www.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v5i1p1.html.

Weelwright, P. (1962), Metaphor and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Wertz, D. C. (2002). Embryo and Stem Cell Research in the USA: A Political History. Trends in Molecular Medicine, 8(3), 143-148.

Whitley, R. D. (1984). The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Wouters, P., I. Hellsten, and L. Leydesdorff (2004), Internet time and the reliability of search engines, First Monday 9(10), October 2004.

Zinken J., I. Hellsten & B. Nerlich (in press, 2005), ”Discourse metaphors”. Forthcoming in Body, Language and Mind. Volume 2: Sociocultural situatedness, edited by R. Frank, R. Dirven, J. Zlatev and T. Ziemke. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Zitt, M., E. Bassecoulard, & Y. Okubo. (2000). Shadows of the Past in International Cooperation: Collaboration Profiles of the Top Five Producers of Science. Scientometrics, 47(3), 627-657.