The research group Analytical Information Systems works primarily on the automatic analysis of textual data (Text Mining). Textual data have always played an important role (e.g. documentations, e-mails, minutes, etc.). Besides, Web. 2.0 provides almost indefinite amounts of information from different new sources (among others blogs, news, Twitter, forums).

Compared to the corporate context, information from social networks is more diverse. For example, users write product descriptions and product assessments on their own and express their opinion about companies and their products directly. As a result, purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by the assessment of other customers. Thus, companies are very interested in the analysis and monitoring of such data in Web 2.0.

Organizations and people in public life, e.g. political parties, are also interested in the mood expressed in the net about statements or actions. Due to the high number of sources, the (manual) extraction of a general view is difficult.

The aim of this workgroup is to analyze and further develop processes which allow for an automatic analysis of textual information and can also be used by small and medium-sized companies or other organizations. Particular emphasis will be put on extracting opinions und thus on separating objective and subjective information (Opinion Mining).