September 18, 2008
The Spin-o-meter
Scientists have developed a system to analyze speeches to determine "spin."
"The important thing to recognise is that politicians aren't typically good at out-and-out lies, but they are very adept at dancing around the truth," says David Skillicorn, a mathematics and computer science researcher at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. "The 2008 election has so far given us plenty of chances to see them in action."Skillicorn has been watching out for verbal "spin". He has developed an algorithm that evaluates word usage within the text of a conversation or speech to determine when a person "presents themselves or their content in a way that does not necessarily reflect what they know to be true".
So what are the results for 2008?
Each of the candidates had made speeches containing very high and very low levels of spin, according to Skillicorn's program, depending on the occasion. In general though, Obama's speeches contain considerably higher spin than either McCain or Clinton. For example, for their speeches accepting their party's nomination for president, Obama's speech scored a spin value of 6.7 - where 0 is the average level of spin within all the political speeches analysed, and positive values represent higher spin. In contrast, McCain's speech scored -7.58, while Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention scored 0.15. Skillicorn also found that Sarah Palin's speeches contain slightly more spin than average.So the analysis appears to back up McCain's claim that he is a "straight talker". However, for the purposes of political speech-making this may not be an entirely good thing for him. "Obama uses spin in his speeches very well," says Skillicorn. For example, Obama's spin level skyrockets when facing problems in the press, such as when Jeremiah Wright, the reverend of his former church, made controversial comments to the press.
"When you see these crises come along, the spin goes up," Skillicorn says. "Obama is very good at using stirring rhetoric to deal with the issues. And it seems to work if you look at what happens in the polls afterwards."
Running this analysis side by side with the Luntz-o-meter would make for interesting political TV.
... if you're a politics nerd, that is.
Is a spin score of 7.58 for McCain a typo?
I think it was Gary Kasparov who claimed he could always beat any computer at chess because it ultimately comes down to the programming, which is done by other humans. One wonders how an algorithm can "compute" spin. As long as the results agree with one's visceral idea of what they should be I guess we call it accurate. Sorta like global warming or quantum physics.
Posted by: johngalt at September 18, 2008 4:15 PMMy blog brother jg des not believe in quantum mechanics? How does he explain the diffusion paradox? Oh well, we'll cover that another time.
My four years with a startup were spent commercializing research in computed analyses of language. I saw some pretty amazing things and while I won't stand up for this particular research, it is a serious pursuit, done by serious people, and I have seen some pretty amazing breakthroughs. The brief pieces of the algorithms included in the article seem to make sense.
But yeah, maybe it was 7.38; I think you're right.
Posted by: jk at September 18, 2008 6:03 PM | What do you think? [2]