Einar Thorsen

Professor of Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University

Publications | Conferences | Teaching | Projects

PGP Public Key
Finger print: 5568 022B F641 362E D18B BCCC 1FC5 CA72 FA67 FDF9
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter

Powered by Genesis

First prime ministerial debate as Wordle clouds

April 16, 2010 by Einar Thorsen 3 Comments

The BBC has published the transcript of the first prime ministerial debates which were broadcast on ITV yesterday.

With a bit of hacking around the text I’ve put together a few Wordle clouds to visualise what the individual contributors said. Entirely unscientific and just for a bit of fun…

Alastair Stewart (ITV host)

Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats)

Gordon Brown (Labour)

David Cameron (Conservatives)

Audience Members

All speakers overall

Filed Under: Blog, Journalism Tagged With: alastairstewart, davidcameron, election2010, gordonbrown, itv, leadersdebate, nickclegg, wordle

Comments

  1. bethanyusher says

    April 16, 2010 at 13:05

    I really like this….gives a quick feel for what their strategies were on the night…..also I noticed David Cameron used "I think" quite a bit….what he thinks seemed to be quite important to him, at expense of, gosh darn it, real facts…

    Reply
  2. Dan Ashton says

    April 17, 2010 at 07:17

    Hi Einar,

    This is great. I like how the cloud itself creates phrases through its layout – "government things want money"; "immigration make good policy"

    Reply
    • einarthorsen says

      April 19, 2010 at 12:09

      Yes, patterns can be pretty amusing in subverting original message 😉

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *