  According to Freud "words were originally magic and to this day words have
retained much of their ancient magical power". By words, behaviors are
transformed and problems are solved. The way we use words reveals our
intentions, goals and values. Novel tools for text analysis help understand the
magical power of words. This power is multiplied, if it is combined with the
study of social networks, i.e. with the analysis of relationships among social
units. This special issue of the International Journal of Information
Management, entitled "Combining Social Network Analysis and Text Mining: from
Theory to Practice", includes heterogeneous and innovative research at the
nexus of text mining and social network analysis. It aims to enrich work at the
intersection of these fields, which still lags behind in theoretical,
empirical, and methodological foundations. The nine articles accepted for
inclusion in this special issue all present methods and tools that have
business applications. They are summarized in this editorial introduction.
