Advancing the Field of Writing Analytics: Lessons from “Text-as-Data” in the Social Sciences

Abstract

The field of writing analytics is currently in a state of growth, redefinition, and refinement. In this essay, I review the trajectory of a related subfield, text-as-data in political science, as a lens through which to understand the present and future of writing analytics. I first describe how text-as-data has evolved over several eras, before transitioning to a review of some of the most exciting contemporary areas of political text-as-data. I then draw parallels between these developments and the work being done by the community of writing analytics scholars across the globe. I conclude by proposing several considerations for current practitioners seeking to emulate the “success story” of political text-as-data, including investment in the collection of new, high-quality corpora, development of shareable and open-source methodological tools for text analysis, and the strengthening of a community of scholarship.