Elena Fernández Fernández
Lecturer
Bio
I am a Lecturer based at the Central IT/Zentrale Informatik at the University of Zurich. Holding a research profile that lies at the intersection between Computational Social Science, Digital Humanities, and Media and Communication Studies, my research interests focus on assembling new platforms of knowledge that aim to connect quantitative and qualitative research approaches across Social Sciences and Humanities domains.
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I completed a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley (2019), a M.A. in Spanish Studies at the University of Virginia (2013), and a B.A. in English Philology at the University of Salamanca (2011).
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From 2021-2023, I was a Marie Curie Post-doctoral researcher based at the University of Zurich and at the University of Copenhagen/Technical University of Denmark and the Principal Investigator of GLOTECH. From 2019-2021, I was a Eurotech Post-Doctoral Fellow. Hosted by the Technical University of Munich and co-hosted by the Eindhoven University of Technology. I was the Principal Investigator of PRESSTECH.
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Have a look at my research profiles:
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- Orcid: Elena Fernández Fernández (0000-0001-6596-6349) (orcid.org)
- Goole Scholar: ‪Elena Fernández Fernández‬ - ‪Google Académico‬
- Research Gate: Elena Fernández Fernández (researchgate.net)
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Latest Publication
Measuring the Acceleration of the Social Construction of Time using the BOE (Boletín Oficial del Estado).
The Practice of Conceptual History, by Reinhart Koselleck, explores the idea that there is a direct relationship between technological advancements and an acceleration in the social construction of time. This paper will quantify this theory by measuring information density and information variety of narratives in a BOE (Boletín Oficial del Estado) datasate of thirty years (1988-2018). Using Quantitative Narrative Analysis, we will define a narrative unit as a triplet of Subject, Verb, Object (SVO), and we will define information density (ID) as the ratio of narrative units per words per year. Afterwards, we will quantify the different contexts of narratives to measure information variety (IV) by constructing a network of semantic closeness from trained word embeddings. This paper will present an increased IV and ID over the observational time, indicating more and more facts being reported. The results will show evidence of an accleration of the social construction of time.
Research Interests
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Processes of information spread and information behaviour.
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Time.
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Regionalism, Nationalism, Globalization.
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Science and Technology in Society.
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Cultural Studies, Intellectual History, History of Ideas.
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Computational Narrative Modelling across different Information Systems (Social Media, News Media, Fiction).
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Elena Fernández Fernández