Visualisations of key emerging technologies and social issues I

The major aim of this empirical analysis is to provide tools to map and explore the most important social challenges and emerging technologies. The report presents a methodology that can be implemented for various topics and sources, enabling a data-driven agenda setting for policy, with problem recognition, definition and selection.The text mining analysis is based on a novel dataset of technology news articles and academic working papers. Using web-scraping tools, more than 213 thousand articles, and more than 139 thousand working papers were collected. The sources include 14 major English-language technology websites from the US, EU and Australia, and 2 working paper repositories, covering both social and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) sciences. The data has been collected for a period of 40 months (between 2016-01-01 and 2019-04-30).

To demonstrate the potential of the methodology, deep dives are prepared for 8 umbrella topics, chosen from the most trending technologies and issues:

● Artificial intelligence and machine learning

● Internet of Things

● Blockchain and cryptocurrencies

● Quantum computing

● Internet regulation

● Social media and content crisis

● Market competition

● Chinese tech sector