The symbolic-cultural dimension of the digital transformation in HE. A comparative analysis

European projects lend themselves to facing a comparative analysis through qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. Among the various elements that organise the comparison, an important component is the cultural dimension since it organises social actors’ practices, often carried out with qualitative methods. However, in line with the literature, this dimension is detectable through text mining methods since it determines the choice and association of the words used to organise communication. This work proposes a text-mining procedure for comparing the documents’ symbolic-cultural categories, in line with the theory of translation. In particular, Emotional Text Mining was used to study the cultural differences in digital development in Higher Education among countries through the analysis of the country partners’ report of the Erasmus+ Project ECOLHE (Empower Competences for on life Learning in Higher Education1) to identify the symbolic-cultural categories and the representations of digital development. Results have important implications for identifying digital culture development indicators starting from texts, an aspect that could be considered relevant for policymakers in the context of Erasmus+ projects.