20 January 2009

President Obama's Inaugural Address as a text cloud



Now, compare this cloud to the speech he gave on election night:



To me the clouds suggest both speeches displayed an appreciation for the significance of that moment in history, but the Inaugural Address was much more forceful in its delivery and fierce in its tone, the invocation of scripture to "set aside childish things," the strong suggestion that difficult work lies ahead.

Not surprisingly, the election night speech was about victory while the Inaugural Address was about work. President Obama, in the strongest terms to date, asserted a mandate today.

6 comments:

Delora said...

Any chance of comparing these to Bush's inaugural addresses? Maybe even Clinton's?

David said...

interesting. just compared it to Obama's election eve speech. But that's another great comparison idea.

Anonymous said...

I don't get text clouds. Never have. Words tossed together in a pile with no apparent order or relation.

Katherine Gray said...

Anon: The relationship is in the text size of the words. The bigger the word the more times it appears in the data set. In this case we can see the general theme and tone of the speaches in the largest words.

akahn said...

De:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/washington/20090117_ADDRESSES.html

Anonymous said...

Also, one is sanserif where there other has them.