Introduction to corpus building and text analysis with Voyant Tools

The slides published here were created for teaching basic text analysis / distant reading with Voyant Tools to MA students in the humanities and social sciences. The focus is on analysing social media data. When the course "Machines of Knowledge" at Maastricht University was first taught, we used Twitter for data collection. After Elon Musk's take-over of the platform and changes to the API, we began using Apple podcast reviews and YouTube comments instead. Also, the technologies we use for data collection have evolved over time. Initially, we used browser-based scraping tools such as Netlytic, given that most of our students have no technical background. In the meantime, we are using Python code that students can easily adjust to collect their own data. The developments of the course are reflected in the slides from the different academic years.