Theatrical Genre Prediction using Social Network Metrics

Manisha Shukla, Susan Gauch, Lawrence Evalyn

2018

Abstract

With the emergence of digitization, large text corpora are now available online which provide humanities scholars an opportunity to perform literary analysis leveraging the use of computational techniques. Almost no work has been done to study the ability of mathematical properties of network graphs to predict literary features. In this paper, we apply network theory concepts in the field of literature to explore correlations between the mathematical properties of the social networks of plays and the plays’ dramatic genre. Our goal is to find metrics which can distinguish between theatrical genres without needing to consider the specific vocabulary of the play. We generated character interaction networks of 36 Shakespeare plays and tried to differentiate plays based on social network features captured by the character network of each play. We were able to successfully predict the genre of Shakespeare’s plays with the help of social network metrics and hence establish that differences of dramatic genre are successfully captured by the local and global social network metrics of the plays. Since the technique is highly extensible, future work can be applied larger groups of plays, including plays written by different authors, from different periods, or even in different languages.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Shukla M., Gauch S. and Evalyn L. (2018). Theatrical Genre Prediction using Social Network Metrics. In Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 1: KDIR; ISBN 978-989-758-330-8, SciTePress, pages 229-236. DOI: 10.5220/0006935002290236

in Bibtex Style

@conference{kdir18,
author={Manisha Shukla and Susan Gauch and Lawrence Evalyn},
title={Theatrical Genre Prediction using Social Network Metrics},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 1: KDIR},
year={2018},
pages={229-236},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006935002290236},
isbn={978-989-758-330-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2018) - Volume 1: KDIR
TI - Theatrical Genre Prediction using Social Network Metrics
SN - 978-989-758-330-8
AU - Shukla M.
AU - Gauch S.
AU - Evalyn L.
PY - 2018
SP - 229
EP - 236
DO - 10.5220/0006935002290236
PB - SciTePress