From Normal Business to Financial Crisis... and Back Again. An Illustration of the Benefits of Cassandre for Qualitative Analysis

Cassandre is a free open source text analysis software tool. It uses semi-automatic coding, based on the identification of markers, grouped into registers, which represent analysis categories. Studying the causes of the financial crisis makes it possible to construct a series of registers (responsibility, negligence, domino effect, change and return to normal). Cross-referencing these registers reveals contrasting views (positive and negative) of the economic, political and financial spheres. These conceptions vary both according to how they explain the phenomenon and the measures that they advocate (ranging from the development of new methods to "getting back to normal"). The example of the financial crisis is an opportunity to discuss the benefits of semi-automatic coding and determine the limitations that are likely to impact negatively on the analysis.