Big data insights into social macro trends (1800-2000): A replication study

摘要

Seeking to advance a big data approach to social theory, Roth et al. (2017) applied the Google Ngram Viewer to explore the way the evolution of the function systems of the modern society is reflected in the Google Books corpus. The authors produced a highly counterintuitive finding that the modern Western societies cannot be adequately described as capitalist. In order to respond to the controversies raised by this finding, the present article replicates Roth et al. (2017) study while using a superior plotting software that allows to control the risk that keyword strength can be biased due to the neglect of keyword quantity. Covering the English-, French-, and German-language corpora, the present replication effort has confirmed the existence of distinct trends exhibited by the individual function systems, such as secularization, the persistent dominance of the political system, and the relatively lesser role of the economic system. These results are largely consistent with those of Roth et al. (2017) and thus lend credence to the authors' sceptical assessment of the validity of the capitalist semantics. The article concludes by pleading for the routinization of big data-driven checks of the modem social theories.