Within the research process in the broad sense, not every step can neatly be placed before or after the other. The same is true for digital tools that aid spoken word research. It is often hard to categorize every type of tool neatly.
In this category, a broad array of mostly lightweight webbased tools will be listed which have the potential to aid your research process by allowing you to explore data in ways your naked eye isn't able to. Not all the tools will give you scientifically valid or relevant results which can be directly used in scientific writing, but all of them allow you to get inspired to approach data in new and creative ways.
Tools
Voyant Tools
Online Text-mining - Text analysis - Lightweight, simple
Free - Webbased
Voyant is a lightweight web-based text mining tool which is split up in multiple windows, all having its own uses when it comes to bulk text analysis. While the tool will not be very useful to generate complete research results, it can be useful for finding trends and commonly named subjects in digital transcripts.
Sketch Engine
Text analysis package - Large text corpora - Text mining
Free (academic use within EU) - Webbased
The Sketch Engine software is a comprehensive suite of text analysis tools designed to handle texts in many languages and scripts with a size of billions of words. The analysis takes into account the linguistic features of each language such as morphology or grammar and is suitable for various text analysis techniques.
Autosummarizer
Automatic summarizer - Artificial Intelligence - Easy-to-use
Free - Webbased
https://www.autosummarizer.com/
Advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence have caused great leaps in the abilities of algorhythms to automatically summarize texts into a shorter version, selecting which parts are core information and which parts to leave out. Many of such algorhythms exist, and Autosummarizer is just a simple web-based example. While most useful for newspaper articles, the technology in general could be useful for shortening transcripts and finding the common thread of an interview.