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| This page describes a feature in AmCAT 3.4 |
| View other version: 3.3 - 3.4 - 3.5 |
The output option Graph/Table in the Query search is the last of three main functions of automatic content analysis in AmCAT. The Table/Graph function enables you to produce various kinds of frequency lists or cross-tables and graph them visually. This function can also be very useful to get a first impression of how your topics of interest have evolved over time or media.
When you select the output option 'Graph Table', AmCAT provides you with a list of options for this particular function (see Figure 6.4.1). You first specify which data you want to display on the X-axis (either per date, medium or total) and the Y-axis (either per total, medium or search term) of your cross-tab or graph. If you chose 'Date' for the X-asis, you can further specify the date interval of your preference. Click on the drop down list next to 'Date interval' and choose to display the data on the X-axis either per day, week, month, quarter or year. AmCAT automatically selects a monthly date interval for your graph/table by default. Next, you click on the dropdown list next to 'Output type' and select how you want to display your results, either as a table or a graph. Click on the 'Submit' button below the output options to generate the graph/table.
Time for an example! Again, we will use the article set called 'Wikinews articles for terror*', an article set with all Wikinews articles including the word 'terror' from November 2004 until January 2015. Let's say we want to measure attention for Israel and Palestine in these Wikinews articles on terror* per year. We enter 'isreal' and 'palestine' on seperate rows in the Keyword Search string(s) field. We select the output option 'Graph/Table'. Next, we select 'Date' for the X-axis and select 'Year' for the date interval. For the Y-axis, we select 'Search Term'. When we select 'Table' as the outpute type and click 'Submit', we get the table displayed in Figure 6.5.2. When we select 'Graph' as the output type and click 'Submit', we get the graph displayed in Figure 6.5.3.
The first thing we notice is that Isreal has received a lot more attention from Wikinew in articles on terror* than Palestine. Israel was particularly often mentioned in Wikines articles on terror* in 2005 (31 times), 2006 (40 times) and 2008 (30 times). Palestine was most often mentioned in Wikinews articles on terror* in 2006, a total of 9 times. Importantly, the frequency of mentions of Israel and Palestine in Wikinews articles on terror* does not tell us anything about the content of these particular articles. Was Israel accused of a terrorist attack? Has the Palestinian government taken a stand against terrorism? We have no idea! To find out more about the attention for these countries in Wikinews on terror* - and look further then mere frequecies - we can click on the frequencies in the table or the dots in the graph to get an overview of all the articles of this particular year. When we click on a particular article in this overview we get the full version of the particular article and learn more about the context in which Isreal and Palestine were mentioned together with terror*.
If we would like to look more specifically into the attention per year, we could choose to display the attention per month rather than per year. This would, of course, produce a table that is 12 times as long as the current table. Which time interval is most appropriate depends on your particular research interest as well as the time span of the articles in your article set. Similarly, you may prefer to display a graph rather than a table or vice versa. Just play with the AmCAT options a little to see what works best for you!
You may notice that a new button appears as soon as you click 'Submit', the 'Export Aggregation' button. You can use this button to save the frequency list or cross-tab you have produced as either a CSV, Excel, SPSS or HTML file, enabling you to open, edit and use the data in another program. If you export the graph, the data on which the graph is based will be exported, not the actual graph itself.
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