1. A computer-implemented method for a highly automated media analysis of influencer networks, comprising: defining, by an application of a computerized selection process of a computer that considers user-entered criteria, one or more scopes of media content to be included in an analysis project; retrieving, by the computer, relevant media content from a plurality of providers as defined by the one or more scopes of the analysis project, the media content including published text articles and a body of text for each of the text articles; extracting, by an application of an automatic computerized, linguistic-based and statistically-supported entity extraction process, entities from the text articles, the entities being data including names of people, organizations, locations, and brands recited in the body of text of the text articles in the retrieved media content; manually associating, selectively and with the aid of the computer, for each of the entities, a functional role of each of the entities for each text article of the retrieved media content; manually associating, selectively and with the aid of the computer, for each of the entities, a favorability score for each of the entities for each text article of the received media content; storing the entities in a relational database, where the entities that are co-cited in a body of text of the text articles are linked to each other for an associated text article; performing, by the computer, a first computation characterizing a network of influence relationships between each of the entities and each text article of the retrieved media content based on the extracted information and the manually associated functional role and favorability of each of the entities; and performing, by the computer, a second computation characterizing connection properties of individual entities with respect to the other entities; performing, by the computer, a third computation characterizing connection properties of at least a portion of the overall network of influence, the third computation to include a value for the network's cohesion property and density property; and outputting a result of the first, second, and third computations to produce a graphical, interactive representation of the network of influence in which a user may select individual entities to examine their associated connection properties, link to other documents, and link to web pages related to the entities, and combinations thereof.
1. A computer-implemented method for a highly automated media analysis of influencer networks, comprising: defining, by an application of a computerized selection process of a computer that considers user-entered criteria, one or more scopes of media content to be included in an analysis project; retrieving, by the computer, relevant media content from a plurality of providers as defined by the one or more scopes of the analysis project, the media content including published text articles and a body of text for each of the text articles; extracting, by an application of an automatic computerized, linguistic-based and statistically-supported entity extraction process, entities from the text articles, the entities being data including names of people, organizations, locations, and brands recited in the body of text of the text articles in the retrieved media content; manually associating, selectively and with the aid of the computer, for each of the entities, a functional role of each of the entities for each text article of the retrieved media content; manually associating, selectively and with the aid of the computer, for each of the entities, a favorability score for each of the entities for each text article of the received media content; storing the entities in a relational database, where the entities that are co-cited in a body of text of the text articles are linked to each other for an associated text article; performing, by the computer, a first computation characterizing a network of influence relationships between each of the entities and each text article of the retrieved media content based on the extracted information and the manually associated functional role and favorability of each of the entities; and performing, by the computer, a second computation characterizing connection properties of individual entities with respect to the other entities; performing, by the computer, a third computation characterizing connection properties of at least a portion of the overall network of influence, the third computation to include a value for the network's cohesion property and density property; and outputting a result of the first, second, and third computations to produce a graphical, interactive representation of the network of influence in which a user may select individual entities to examine their associated connection properties, link to other documents, and link to web pages related to the entities, and combinations thereof. 12. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , further comprising an automatic computerized process to associate the functional role and the favorability score for each of the entities for each text article of the retrieved media content.