Information mining — Reflections on recent advancements and the road ahead in data, text, and media mining

In this introduction, we briefly summarize the state of data and text mining today. Taking a very broad view, we use the term information mining to refer to the organization and analysis of structured or unstructured data that can be quantitative, textual, and/or pictorial in nature. The key question, in our view, is, “How can we transform data (in the very broad sense of this term) into ‘actionable knowledge’, knowledge that we can use in pursuit of a specified objective(s).” After detailing a set of key components of information mining, we introduce each of the papers in this volume and detail the focus of their contributions.