In your analysis you are interested in certain concepts. However, a textual documents contains words, not concepts. To measure the attention for concepts you have to create search strings that measure the attention for the concepts of interest. With a search string you describe this concept using words. You can optimalize your search strings by using synonyms or wildcards, by including conditions and by searching for phrases rather than merely seperate words. A good search string results in every article containing a certain concept without including irrelevant articles. You can find a complete overview of the rules for formulating search strings by clinking on the 'Search Syntax Help' button below the 'Keyword Search string(s)' field in the AmCAT Query Search function (see yellow box Figure 4.1). It is important to note that AmCAT does not take capitals into account for the words you enter in your search strings (e.g., you enter 'obama' in as a search term, not 'Obama'). However, if you use boolean search terms (e.g., OR, AND or NOT) you do need to use capitals. Below you find an overviews if the AmCAT Keyword Search operators.
| Notation in Query screen | Description |
|---|---|
| obama OR terrorism;
obama terrorism |
Articles that contain either the word obama or the word terrorism. When there is a blank space between two words, AmCAT automatically selects the boolean search term OR in the search. |
| LexisNexis | (...) |
| CSV | (...) |
| APA | (...) |
| BZK PDF Scraper | (...) |
| DeFacto student (html) | (...) |
| DeFacto professional (rtf) | (...) |
| BZK HTML | (...) |
| BZK EML | (...) |
| Factivia | (...) |
AmCAT