The Cultural Mapping and Pattern Analysis (CMAP) Visualization Toolkit: Open Source Text Analysis for Qualitative and Computational Social Science

The CMAP (Cultural Mapping and Pattern Analysis) visualization toolkit is an open-source suite for analyzing and visualizing text data--from qualitative fieldnotes and in-depth interview transcripts to historical documents and web-scraped data such as message board posts or blogs. The toolkit is designed for scholars integrating pattern analysis, data visualization, and explanation in qualitative and/or computational social science (CSS). Despite the existence of off-the-shelf commercial qualitative data analysis software, there remains a shortage of highly scalable open-source options capable of handling large datasets and supporting advanced statistical and language modeling. The foundation of the toolkit is a pragmatic approach that aligns research tools with social science project goals--empirical explanation, theory-guided measurement, comparative design, or evidence-based recommendations--guided by the principle that research paradigms and questions should determine methods. Consequently, the CMAP visualization toolkit offers a wide range of possibilities through the adjustment of a relatively small number of parameters and allows seamless integration with other Python tools.