Automated text analysis for understanding radical activism: The topical agenda of the North American animal liberation movement

Abstract

It is difficult to study radical social movements due to their often covert, fluid, and fleeting qualities. As a consequence, data limitations and/or theoretical disagreements abound within research on such movements. We contend that the texts produced by radical movements and their supporters provide a window into group features, and that recent advances in automated text analysis methods afford a means for unlocking these texts in a systematic fashion. We evaluate the contentions through an automated analysis of the radical animal liberation movement’s primary North American publication. Our application provides novel insights into the topical agenda of animal liberationists, and the relative attention paid towards networking, (non)violence, radicalization, and direct actions. Examination of these topics over time further reveals a number of ideological and tactical shifts, which are predictive of future direct-action events. This demonstrates the benefits of automated text analysis for the study of radical movements and their texts.