iNet is free, open source software and frequently updated to improve performance and capabilities.

1. Installation

You’ll find the program at http://www.content-analysis.org/inet/builds/ as a zip-file. Before installing, a few remarks have to be made. First of all: at this point, the software is only compatible with systems running Windows (a Mac-version still has a beta status). Secondly, an up to date version of the free Sun Java platform version 1.5 or later has to be installed (you can download the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) from www.java.com/getjava ). To install iNet, just extract the zipped files to a folder on your hard disk, like ‘C:\Program Files\iNet\’. Now you can start iNet by accessing this folder and open the executable file ‘iNet.exe’. However, this is a quite lengthy path to get the program running. By adding a shortcut to your desktop, you can access the software with one click. Right click on your Windows desktop to do this and select new -> shortcut, then navigate to the correct folder and select ‘iNet.exe’. When done, iNet is ready for use.

2. Logging in and selecting a coding job

A grey, empty window appears when the program is started. As mentioned in the introduction, a username and password are required in order to enter the underlying Amcat-database and be able to code texts. This paragraph will show how to log in and select a job with articles to analyse. Step 1: Navigate to the File menu and select Connect _> Connect_ to AmCAT DB (see image below) to switch to the log in window.


Step 2: Select_ AmCAT via SSH Tunnel_ (this option establishes a secured connection to the server). Then hit Next and enter your user name and password and click on the Next button again (see image below). iNet should successfully connect to AmCAT.

Step 3: The coding jobs window becomes visible (see image below). This screen gives an overview of all jobs assigned to you. The second column shows the name of the job; usually this is the title of the current research project (like ‘Presidential elections 2008’). Subsequently, the third and fourth columns give information about who assigned the job to you and on which date. Column five and six show the amount of articles within a job and the number already coded. To open a job, just double click on it or select it and press the Finish button. After this, you’ll have to be patient for a while as iNet reads and loads all data stored on the server.