The article opens up an empirical exploration into how ordinary European people perceive the meaning of culture and what are its sociopolitical implications. Drawing on original survey data from over 11,000 respondents across nine European countries (collected in 2021 by the INVENT project), the study analyzes responses to an open-ended question where participants defined “culture” in their own words. Structural topic modeling is employed to identify coherent clusters of cultural understandings and their interrelationships. Beyond examining how these perspectives vary across countries, the study uses regression analysis to explore variations based on key sociodemographic divisions, as well as sociopolitical and cultural factors within and across the nine European societies: Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The findings reveal significant national differences and social stratification in cultural understandings, showcasing the effectiveness of computational text analysis for open-ended survey research.
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Sirkka, O., Walo, S., Purhonen, S., Verboord, M., Janssen, S., & Bonnet, P. (2024). Understandings of Culture: A European Bottom-up Study Using Structural Topic Modeling. Socius, 10. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231241278524