Visual Analysis of Obama's Acceptance Speech
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Using Wordle, I've created a visual analysis (comparable to a tag cloud) of Barack Obama's acceptance speech. Wordle is a simple tool that allows us to use visual cues to illustrate word frequency. In this case, words that are "gray" and "small" appear less frequently than words that are "bright" and large.
This is not a "straight" visualization of the text of the speech. Instead, I have eliminated words that appeared fewer than four times. In addition, I normalized some words. Wordle automatically eliminates common words like "a" or "the." My methodology follows:
Normalization
- American - Americans - America - america's ... became America
- created - create ... became create
- family - families... became families
- investment - invest ... became invest
- job - job ... became jobs
- political - politics .. became politics
- safely - safe ... became safe
- United States became UnitedStates
- watching - watched - watch ... became watch
- woman - women ... became women
Words Removed:
These words appeared no more than three times in the speech:
across ... Afghanistan ... ago ... ahead ... alive ... also ... benefits ... best ... Bill ... challenges ... children ... college ... clear ... could've ... . cut ... else ... decades ... defeat ... deserve ... different ... energy ... failure ... finally .. finish ... first ... follow ... generation ... get ... hands ... hear ... heard ... hope ... idea ... kennedy ... lead ... less ... listen ... long ... makes ... military ... moments ... moral ... never ... old ... part ... poverty ... power ... proud ... pursue ... ready ... renewable ... require ... restore ... rise ... something ... still ... stop ... talk ... talking ... things ... troops ... . understand ... walk ... well
I see now that I should go back and combine a few of these words.
However, I also created a Wordle visual with full text of the speech. This image, with the dominant complementary words "America" and "American" illustrate the need for normalization.
More analysis on Friday. Time for bed!
Postscript: Wordle does not like my version of Firefox but plays nicely with Safari. Here is the modified Wordle image; here is the unmodified image.
Comments
That’s a great picture. Really captures the focus of the speech in a very beautiful way. I think I’d rather all speeches were presented as Wordles.
Thanks, Jenn!
I’ll be doing the same for McCain next week … I’m going to start a gallery, I think.
I wish you could be teaching in every social studies class in the country, because you intepret politics in a way that makes it fun, tangible, comprehensible, and exciting.
I just showed your Wordle of Obama’s speech to my 17-year-old daughter (who’s a creative sort and smart, but just not motivated by her classes) and she was mesmerized and asked me for the URL so she could read it herself.
THIS is what I’m talking about - engaging readers in a way that few others do. Thank you for your unique take on politics and for always finding a new view that enlightens us.
Thanks, Linda! Anything to get “kids” interested in politics.