Automating analysis of church-related tweets

In a collaboration with Finnish colleagues, this project will explore whether or not it is possible to use machine learning techniques to automate the process of qualitatively coding the content of church-related tweets.

This project sees CCGR’s Anthony-Paul Cooper working with Prof Erkki Sutinen (University of Turku), Emmanuel Awuni Kolog (University of Eastern Finland), Dr Calkin Suero Montero (University of Eastern Finland) and Martti Sutinen (Data Science Practitioner) to build-on findings of a previous study to understand the topics discussed by Camden’s church tweeters (this previous paper can be found here). This work will explore whether or not the time-consuming process of qualitative thematic analysis can be automated using machine learning algorithms, in order to repeat the analysis on a larger dataset containing tweets posted from across all London boroughs, in order to identify new findings from the content of these church-related tweets.

This research work contributes to the growing field of digital theology and is the first of a number of planned projects between CCGR, University of Turku and University of Eastern Finland.