Pollster.com: Tag Clouds for the Democratic Debate

April 27, 2007

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Comments

mary madderly:

Shouldn't they have rounded edges rather than straight?

Posted on April 27, 2007 11:50 AM

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Elliott Larkfield:

A tag cloud for Joe Biden that doesn't include the words "facetious" or "solicitous"? I'm amazed.

Posted on April 27, 2007 12:15 PM

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oddjob:

I see that Obama's manner of thinking about things is utterly unlike any of his competitors, and that, as you point out, Biden, Clinton, & Dodd share a "wonky" way of approaching national issues.

Posted on April 27, 2007 12:15 PM

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Metadata:

Obama's tag cloud is almost devoid of words with powerful emotional content. Contrast that with Hillary. Edwards isn't bad, either. This is a weakness for Obama. If his words were not powerful, how will people remember him, unless his personal presentation made up for the weak content.

One of the key aspects of right-wing framing is the use of emotionally loaded language, in particular words that code for powerful images.

It would be interesting to observe the tag-cloud for a random George Bush speech, or a random Tom Tancredo speech.

Posted on April 27, 2007 12:29 PM

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where's gravels?

Posted on April 27, 2007 12:41 PM

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Keith Murphy:

Obama's tag cloud has many more process words than the others - adverbs vs. nouns. I think it is telling that among his biggest nouns are "families" and "women."

Also telling is the total word count = the amount of time to speak them. The more words, the more time to talk. It seems apparent that MSNBC gave time roughly equivalent to the candidates place in the polls with Obama and Clinton swapped.

Posted on April 27, 2007 1:26 PM

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"Constitution" only appears in one of the clouds.

Posted on April 27, 2007 1:32 PM

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Mike Anderson:

Mark and Janet:

Thanks for the example and the link to TagCrowd -- I'm definitely going to use this in my statistics classes!

Posted on April 27, 2007 1:33 PM

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Tim Blank:

"energy", "oil", "warming" do not appear at all. Very discouraging.

Posted on April 27, 2007 3:25 PM

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Paul:

why did you leave out the word "hell" from gravel's tag cloud? he said it maybe 8 times. answers?

Posted on April 27, 2007 3:42 PM

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PatriciaV:

Mark, is there way of quantifying the tags, assigning a numerical value to those tags considered more attractive?

Posted on April 27, 2007 3:43 PM

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James:

> "energy", "oil", "warming" do not appear at all. Very discouraging.

Obama, Richardson have energy. Kucinich has oil. The tags are in alphabetical order, so even the smaller print words are somewhat decipherable.

Anyway, wouldn't it be dependent upon the questions they were asked?

Posted on April 27, 2007 3:45 PM

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J2:

How many times did Richardson use "unsees"?

Posted on April 27, 2007 4:02 PM

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Robert P.:

I have trouble believing that word count. Seems off to me.

Also, gee, wonder what is on Hillary's mind? President is as big as a breadbasket. While it doesn't even show up for Dodd.

Posted on April 27, 2007 4:22 PM

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Mark Blumenthal:

Paul: We checked, and the problem is that the word "hell" does not appear in the closed captioning of the debate text that Janet used to create the clouds.

Posted on April 27, 2007 4:39 PM

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Dave:

This isn't really pertinent to the topic of discussion but Amazon.com has a word cloud option for most of the books on their site. Click the link that says "concordance" and voila!

Posted on April 27, 2007 6:56 PM

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blindasabat:

How does this sizing thing work if people have set minimum font sizes for their browsers? Is this cloud sizing images or controlled by CSS? (Ask a Standards Oriented Webdesigner if you don't understand this question ;) )

For example, I have my browser set to never use less than 16 point.

Posted on April 28, 2007 2:24 AM

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Ross Smith:

We will definitely be using this at our www.DebateScoop.com site and, I imagine, in the profession of communication studies more generally.

Thanks for the heads up!

Posted on April 28, 2007 2:34 AM

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AJ:

RobertP: I suspect Hillary uses "President" so often because some one decided she needs to seem "Presidential."

I agree with other commenters that Obama's cloud seems very process oriented, though the prominence of "around" may be a verbal tick.

Posted on April 28, 2007 8:28 AM

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Jason Platt:

I think people who are commenting are taking this WAY too seriously. Words by themselves are meaningless, it's the ideas they are part of that really count. I'm not saying there is NO value in analyzing the words by themselves, but that value pales in comparison to the ideas and actions they express.

Posted on April 28, 2007 9:32 AM

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Jill Martindale:

I wonder, would the readers who have posted already have had the same comments if the questions asked, or better yet, the tag clouds for the questions asked had been posted as well? We must remember that the questions posed tend to dictate the candidates' answers. Could tag clouds influence the speech of our candidates and public oficials in the same way that sound bites do today?

Posted on April 28, 2007 11:02 AM

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Jason:

This reminds me of the tag clouds people make on the Many Eyes site. There was a great one with
Gonzales' testimony.

The cool thing about Many Eyes is that you can see two-word phrases, which gives you a whole other view of the text.

Posted on April 28, 2007 5:54 PM

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Shaking fist:

Note that Kucinich's is the only one that mentioned the constitution.

Posted on April 30, 2007 1:48 AM

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Shane:

Keith,

Each candidate received the same amount of time. NBC used special software to keep track of this so Williams could more fairly balance things.

The fact that Obama said 1900 words and Gravel said 700 isn't NBC's fault.

Posted on April 30, 2007 8:41 AM

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Shane:

Shaking,

Kucinich is the only one that mentioned "constitution" enough for the word to make it into his top-50. It's entirely possible that Obama, for example, said "constitution" more times than Kucinich but if he said 50 other words more often than he said "constitution," it won't be on this tag cloud.

Posted on April 30, 2007 8:43 AM

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Shane:

Blind,

The clouds are images, not text. This means that your browser will display them the same as my browser. This is evident when you r-click on it or attempt to highlight text in the "cloud"

Posted on April 30, 2007 8:47 AM

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Renee:

I find it VERY interesting that the word figuring most prominently in Hilary's speech was PRESIDENT. How's that for subliminal messaging!

Posted on May 1, 2007 6:59 PM

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Jasonic:

Chirag Mehta developed a lovely "Tagline Generator - Timeline-based Tag Clouds".
The tool [php script] is available for others to install and use. Be sure to play around with his splendid interactive demos:

Simple Demo - Mini US Presidential Tag Cloud
Popular version - US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud

http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/

Posted on May 3, 2007 12:28 PM

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waitingtoderail:

Hmmm----couldn't you have moved the words "support" and "terrorism" away from each other in Dodd's cloud? Just sayin'.

Posted on May 5, 2007 5:16 AM

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Robert:

I see weasels, pigs, snakes, wolves......a veritable zoo.

Gee I can't wait to see whats in the Republican clouds. More of the same no doubt! - lol

Posted on May 5, 2007 5:17 AM

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steve:

Oh come on. Gravel is not a one-issue guy. That's all he had time to talk about!

Posted on May 5, 2007 5:17 AM

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Anonymous:

What the heck does "unsees" mean?

Posted on May 5, 2007 2:08 PM

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Nick:

I think the word clouds are revealing, regardless of context. The questions asked seem somewhat less relevant, as most of the canidates seemed to pick words consistent with their talking points thus far. Hillary stressing "President", Edwards with "Health Care" and "United", and Kucinich with war.

Posted on May 12, 2007 5:15 PM

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bmerkl:

dynamic pic cloud of the candidates:
http://www.chainofthoughts.com/cgi-bin/pic.cgi?n=race%20for%202008

associated tag cloud of the candidates:
http://www.chainofthoughts.com/cgi-bin/ex.cgi?n=race%20for%202008

Posted on May 16, 2007 7:29 AM

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logipundit:

Metadata:

The assertion that only Republicans use emotional words in their speeches is just exasperating. They're just different words, dummy. :o)

I'm just SHOCKED that the word "fight" didn't show up in Edwards' cloud. I would have bet everything I own on my hearing it at least 12 times. Perhaps I was just dreaming.

Posted on July 25, 2007 3:39 PM

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Bookbird:

I find it interesting that only one candidate had words relating to education... and the word education does not show up anywhere. Is this really not a top concern for these candidates or did the questions not provide an opportunity to discuss this topic?

Posted on August 20, 2007 1:29 PM

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Voxpublica:

When I think back to what Obama says, the word that sticks with me, and with many Americans, I believe, is HOPE. After the last 16 years, Americans are ready to believe is their country rather than sit around and bicker like the hard left and the hard right. We need to work toward what we have in common and tolerate what we don't. I don't boycott a grocery store because they sell souse!

Posted on January 4, 2008 10:26 AM

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Voxpublica:

Posted on January 4, 2008 10:29 AM

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susan78681:

Clinton: Im READY to be PRESIDENT and HEALTH CARE in my ADMINISTRATION will take YEARS because of the WAR I did/didnt support.

OBAMA: I SURE am GOING AROUND showing that WOMEN are INTELLIGENT. FAMILES are MAKING DECISIONS on HEALTH,the REGION and SECURITY. TERRORISTS will go AWAY.

Edwards: AMERICA BELIVES me for PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES. HEATH care is an IMPORTANT QUESTION.

Posted on January 7, 2008 1:06 PM

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Posted on March 9, 2008 11:48 AM

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