Information Theory: Structural Models for Qualitative Data (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences) - Softcover

Krippendorff, Klaus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803921322 ISBN 13: 9780803921320

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1986

Synopsis

Information theory always has the dual appeal of bringing important concepts to the study of communication in society, and of providing a calculus for information flows within systems. This book introduces readers to basic concepts of information theory, extending its original linear conception of communication to many variables, networks, and higher-order interactions (including loops) and developing it into a method for analyzing qualitative data. It elaborates on the algebra of entropy and information, shows how complex models of data are constructed and tested, describes algorithms for exploring multivariate structures using such models, and gives illustrative applications of these techniques. The book is designed as a text but it can also serve as a handbook for social researchers and systems theorists with an interest in communication.

About this title

About the Author

Klaus Krippendorff (PhD in Communication, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1967) is Professor of Communication and Gregory Bateson Term Professor for Cybernetics, Language, and Culture at the University of Pennsylvania′s Annenberg School for Communication. Besides numerous publications in journals of communication, sociological methodology, cybernetics, and system theory, he authored Information Theory, Structural Models for Qualitative Data, a Dictionary of Cybernetics, edited Communication and Control in Society, and coedited The Analysis of Communication Content and Developments and Scientific Theories and Computer Techniques.

Besides supporting various initiatives to develop content analysis techniques and continuing work on reliability measurement, Klaus Krippendorff’s current interest is fourfold: With epistemology in mind, he inquires into how language brings forth reality. As a critical scholar, he explores the conditions of entrapment and liberation. As a second-order cybernetician, he plays with recursive constructions of self and others in conversations; and as designer, he attempts to move the meaning and human use of technological artifacts into the center of design considerations, causing a redesign of design – all of them exciting projects.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803921322
• ISBN 13: 9780803921320
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96