Reflections on the Use of Network Analysis and Text-Mining Tools in the Biographical Study of a Historical Figure.

This paper is a preliminary study of the use of computational techniques on the study of a major historical figure. We demonstrate how the life and writings of Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀, 1879-1942), founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), can be studied with computational methodology in two ways. First, a network visualization of Chen's ties to the numerous associations in his pre-CCP days reveals Chen's multiple connections to members of these networks. This is the first step to future analysis of how Chen's ideas and activities were influenced by the cohorts of these networks, and thereby situating Chen in the political and intellectual historical contexts of the late Qing, early Republic period. Second, by text-mining with R we trace the evolution of some of the major concepts in Chen's writing over time; in this paper we look at the concept of patriotism. We calculate the word frequency curve of Chen's writing and place this curve against the natural language curve of Zipf's law. In particular, we select words such as citizen, race, revolution, youth, democratic, and being patriotic, and call them "umbrella words." His writing was divided into four periods, and in each period we find other high co-occurrence with these umbrella words, and designate these as "companion words." We study the high correlation of the umbrella with the companion words, look at fifty words before and after each companion words, and parse the meaning of the umbrella word in each specific context. The shift in meaning of the concept of patriotism is derived as the overall context changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]