Scraping and Extracting Conversational Topics on Internet Forums

In the last few chapters, we have explored several social networks to analyze the data that we gathered through their APIs. However, there is another world, the world of internet forums or message boards, which most often do not have APIs. Even though they are public, internet forums differ significantly from social networks, as their users are mostly anonymous. This is unlike social networks, where, more often than not, users make their identities available. The anonymous nature of these platforms leads to free and fearless topical discussions on almost every subject on Earth. Technology, health, religion, politics, social activism, markets and industries, and movies are just a few of the threads or topics on which millions of people engage in deep discussions on online forums. Unlike Twitter, which has a limitation...