State of the Union Analytics – Obama clearly focused on jobs

Quantified Communications analysis of State of the Union

Obama had a clear focus in last night’s State of the Union: jobs. Applying a quantified communications analysis of the key concepts from the address last night, Obama connected jobs with just about every other issue in his speech – from women to energy security to the deficit.

The visual representation above comes from a content analysis tool called Leximancer, which uses a combination of computational linguistics, machine learning, and content mapping to highlight the main concepts in written text. The graphic demonstrates which words were used most often, the context in which these words appear, and a “sentiment lens” to compare word usage within the given context to find which themes actually stand out as relevant.

What makes this type of visualization so appealing is that it is an objective representation of the key concepts – this type of quantified communications data adds credibility and comparability, while the visualization makes it easy to read and understand.