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New Directions in Web Analysis: Can Semantic Polling Dissolve the Myth of Two Traditions of Public Opinion Research?

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Analyzing Social Media Data and Web Networks

Abstract

An alternative and possibly more apt title for this chapter might well be ‘1936 and all that’, a veiled reference to Sellars and Yeatman’s humorous history of England which contained a list more fanciful and cliche-bending answers that students had given in examinations. For our purposes, perhaps the most instructive example to be found in that volume relates not to the eponymous date, but the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1492:

Noticing suddenly that the Middle Ages were coming to an end, the Barons now made a stupendous effort to revive the old Feudal amenities of Sackage, Carnage, and Wreckage and so stave off the Tudors for a time. They achieved this by a very clever plan, known as the Wars of the Roses. (Sellars and Yeatman 1930)

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Authors
  1. Nick Anstead
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  2. Ben O’Loughlin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, UK

    Marta Cantijoch

  2. University of Manchester, UK

    Rachel Gibson

  3. University of Salford, UK

    Stephen Ward

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© 2014 Nick Anstead and Ben O’Loughlin

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Cite this chapter

Anstead, N., O’Loughlin, B. (2014). New Directions in Web Analysis: Can Semantic Polling Dissolve the Myth of Two Traditions of Public Opinion Research?. In: Cantijoch, M., Gibson, R., Ward, S. (eds) Analyzing Social Media Data and Web Networks. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137276773_11

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