Understandings of culture: A European bottom-up study using structural topic modeling

Proud to present a new INVENT publication, led by Ossi Sirkka and co-authored by members of the Swiss, Finnish, Dutch, and French research teams. This study opens up an empirical exploration into how ordinary people perceive the meaning of culture and what are its sociopolitical implications. Drawing on original survey data from over 11,000 respondents across nine European countries, the study analyzes responses to an open-ended question where participants defined “culture” in their own words. Structural topic modeling is employed to identify coherent clusters of cultural understandings and their interrelationships. Beyond examining how these perspectives vary across countries, the study uses regression analysis to explore variations based on key sociodemographic divisions, as well as sociopolitical and cultural factors within and across the nine European societies. The findings reveal significant national differences and social stratification in cultural understandings, showcasing the effectiveness of computational text analysis for open-ended survey research.

The article appeared in Socius and is available in Open Access. You can find it here.