About Resonance Analysis
Resonance is one of Discorra’s core measures of comparison.
It tells you how much two corpora “speak the same language” — where they converge, and where they diverge.
Quick Links
- What is resonance?
- How is resonance calculated?
- How to interpret resonance
- Why resonance matters
- Next steps
What is resonance?
Think of resonance as the shared vibration between two voices.
When corpora use many of the same terms in similar frequencies, they resonate.
When they differ strongly, the resonance score falls.
Definition
Resonance measures the degree of overlap between frequency-weighted tokens in two datasets.
How is resonance calculated?
Resonance scoring involves three main stages:
-
Frequency weighting
Each corpus is normalized by word frequency (per 10k tokens). -
Keyness comparison
Z-scores highlight words that are unusually strong in one corpus relative to the other. -
Resonance score
The overlap of high-weight words across corpora is aggregated into a scale from 0 (no resonance) to 1 (maximum resonance).
Why Z-scores?
Raw counts can be misleading. Z-scores normalize for dataset size and highlight the relative strength of tokens, not just volume.
How to interpret resonance
- High resonance (0.7–1.0): Strong overlap. Corpora share many of the same terms, suggesting alignment in language, tone, or topic.
- Moderate resonance (0.4–0.7): Some overlap with distinct vocabulary. Useful for comparing adjacent domains.
- Low resonance (0.0–0.4): Strong divergence. Corpora speak very differently, making it ideal for contrastive insights.
⚠️ Important: Resonance is not sentiment. Two corpora may have high resonance but opposite sentiment. Resonance measures vocabulary overlap only.
Why resonance matters
Resonance can help you:
- Spot where brand voice overlaps with competitors
- Identify white space — terms competitors use that you don’t
- Track shifts in customer discourse over time
- Measure campaign alignment across different channels
Example:
A brand may find high resonance with customers on “convenience” language, but low resonance on “sustainability.” That signals an opportunity to adjust messaging.