Story Review

I would be very surprised if any of the 16 or so people who read this blog hasn’t heard of Wordle and word clouds, but back in August 2008 that was brand new stuff. (The first entry in the official Wordle blog is from late June and the first post on the official Wordle forum is from December.)

August was when 10,000 Words, a blog about journalism and technology, posted these “word cloud analyses” of speeches delivered to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The amazing thing is not that someone thought of using word clouds for journalism — clever as it is, somebody was bound to eventually, — the amazing thing is how well chosen the subject of the wordling is. A month later, Joanna Geary, then of the Birmingham Post, posted a word cloud of a Gordon Brown speech and said: “you can’t read much (or anything, really) into words taken out of context”. It’s been almost half a year since then and there are loads of speeches that have been wordled. Turns out that speeches by politicians, and by anyone with some kind of an agenda, lend themselves especially well to word clouds; and people seem to agree they are quite unambiguous in their message.

Maybe it’s because it is all done by a machine following an algorithm, but people find it hard to say that a speech was not about XYZ if XYZ dominates the picture. Word clouds are seen as objective (although they can be very easily manipulated by their creators). I’ve used wordled speeches to make fun of politicians and not once has anyone doubted their objectivity.

If nothing else, word clouds make for a decent picture to enliven the otherwise ultimately boring story about some old fart giving a speech.

VERDICT

Originality: 4.5 (out of 5)

I have no way to prove it, but it is likely that 10,000 Words‘ was the first use of word clouds for political journalism. At the very least, it’s been one of the pioneers.

Presentation: 5 (out of 5)

Word clouds are beautiful and that 10,000 Words hasn’t diluted their effect by adding observations on how big or small one or another word was doesn’t hurt.

Journalistic value: 5 (out of 5)

Some stories can be perfectly told with just a word cloud and stories about speeches often fall into this category.

Overall: 4.9 (out of 5)

Outstanding.

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