The one comparing narrative social network extraction techniques

Analysing narratives through their social networks is an expanding field in quantitative literary studies. Manually extracting a social network from any narrative can be time consuming, so automatic extraction methods of varying complexity have been developed. However, the effect of different extraction methods on the resulting networks is unknown. Here we model and compare three extraction methods for social networks in narratives: manual extraction, co-occurrence automated extraction and automated extraction using machine learning. Although the manual extraction method produces more precise results in the network analysis, it is highly time consuming. The automatic extraction methods yield comparable results for density, centrality measures and edge weights. Our results provide evidence that automatically-extracted social networks are reliable for many analyses. We also describe which aspects of analysis are not reliable with such a social network. Our findings provide a framework to analyse narratives, which help us improve our understanding of how stories are written and evolve, and how people interact with each other.