The Diachronic Global Corpus (DiGCor) seeks to understand the global flow of political ideas. We know ideas matter, but how do they travel? DiGCor uses “text as data” to answer this question through precise analysis of text, speech, and natural language on a large scale. Standing at the cutting edge of Digital Humanities, DiGCor measures the frequency, scope and scale of terms, arguments, keywords, and expressions of beliefs across time and place. While DiGCor is still in its formative phase, the Liechtenstein Institute utilizes it to provide new insights into how political concepts such as self-determination, sovereignty, non-intervention, and multiculturalism have spread throughout the last century, within as well as between societies. DiGCor has the potential to complement and enhance traditional qualitative analysis in the humanities and social sciences. LISD envisions DiGCor as a readily available tool for the entire academic community, allowing scholars to upload their own text data and gain new insights within specific fields of study and across disciplines.

Project contact: Uriel Abulof

Read an interview about the project on H-Nationalism.