Hechos Y Palabras: La Realidad Colombiana Vista a Través De La Prensa Escrita (Deeds and Words: The Colombian Reality as Seen Through the Press)

Abstract

This paper presents the first application to Colombia of culturomics, a novel research method in the social sciences that describes cultural, social and linguistics trends based on the quantitative analysis of millions of digitized texts. The paper uses all news and editorials published during the past two decades in three national periodicals in order to analyze the trajectories of several social and economic phenomena: corruption, economic optimism, the relative power of the judicial branch, etc. Beyond its specific findings, this paper showcases how culturomics can be used to describe the changing reality of a developing country.

Note: Downloadable document is in Spanish.

Keywords: Colombia, newspapers, institutional change, culturomics

JEL Classification: O54, Z10