Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


Images as Data for Social Science Research

Images as Data for Social Science Research

Images as Data for Social Science Research

An Introduction to Convolutional Neural Nets for Image Classification
Nora Webb Williams, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Andreu Casas, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
John D. Wilkerson, University of Washington
August 2020
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Adobe eBook Reader
9781108863131
$22.00
USD
Adobe eBook Reader
USD
Paperback

    Images play a crucial role in shaping and reflecting political life. Digitization has vastly increased the presence of such images in daily life, creating valuable new research opportunities for social scientists. We show how recent innovations in computer vision methods can substantially lower the costs of using images as data. We introduce readers to the deep learning algorithms commonly used for object recognition, facial recognition, and visual sentiment analysis. We then provide guidance and specific instructions for scholars interested in using these methods in their own research.

    Product details

    August 2020
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9781108863131
    0 pages
    32 b/w illus.
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Introduction
    • 2. Prerequisites for computer vision methods and tutorials
    • 3. Introduction to CNNs for social scientists
    • 4. Overview of fine-tuning a CNN classifier for images
    • 5. Political science working example: images related to a Black Lives Matter protest
    • 6. The promise and limits of autotaggers
    • 7. Application: fine-tuning an open source CNN
    • 8. Legal and ethical concerns in using images as data
    • 9. Conclusion
    • 10. References.
      Authors
    • Nora Webb Williams , University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
    • Andreu Casas , Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
    • John D. Wilkerson , University of Washington