So I’ve been watching the third night of the Republican National Convention, and did a little wordleing with the text, as prepared, of two speeches. The first, given by Hillary Clinton, at the Democratic National Convention in August, and the second, given by Mitt Romney this evening. I chose those two speeches because those two individuals were the also-rans, or losers, of the 2008 primary election.

Click on the pictures for a larger view.

Some observations:

One speech referenced “America” most frequently; the other referenced government most often. Just to pick on the GOP for a moment, for a party that espouses limited government as a main plank in the platform, one of their main speeches leaned on the term “government” as a rhetorical crutch in a major, public and national forum.

Liberal was mentioned more than conservative, and as often as government, in a speech by a self-proclaimed conservative.

Clinton’s speech used “Barack” and “Obama” frequently, which mirrors that campaign’s strategy of tending to rely on Obama, the person as opposed to Obama, the font of policy.

COM students: what are your observations about these two graphics?

Crossposted at karakane.net

Have you seen Wordle? This clever web site makes visual representations of words based on their frequency, given a block of text or a web site address.

Observe:

Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention, Denver, Colorado, August 2008.

As the political season heats up, take some time to see - through artfully designed word maps - what candidates are saying when they speak.

Content analysis, a field under which an application like this would fall, was at one time a favorite research area of mine, and one that I would love to talk to students about.

Crossposted at karakane.net

danah boyd has written a blog entry about the economics and logistics of academic publishing. For anyone looking for a career in academics, her piece gives a good overview of the trends in scholarship and publishing.

Did you watch the Grammy’s last night. I caught a little bit. How are award shows related to communication?

There is a concept called “masking” in nonverbal communication. Basically it means that you “mask” (hide) your true emotions when you’re in a situation where it’s not socially appropriate to show how you really feel. (Meetings at work, meeting people that you may have passed judgment on, etc.). There’s also an theory about micro-expressions. That’s the split second where are true emotions show through before we mask them.

Any show where there’s a competition and clear winner and loser are announced is where we can see real life examples of these nonverbal concepts. Did you see any masking last night? Fake happiness? A moment of disappoint before the smile?  While we’re on it, how to the expression of genuine emotions of the winners show up nonverbally?

Like some of my colleagues, I subscribe to a few communication research journals. I’m also fairly fresh (1.5 yr) from grad school. The big trend right now is “health communication.” It is so big that UB deliberately hired a professor that does only health comm research and they now offer classes to grads and undergrads in health comm.

So what are they looking at? How do doctors and patients communication, how effective are different media messages, (think the Truth campaigns), what can make messages more effective, technology adoption of doctors, patient perception of self, use of health care, and so much more.

I personally can’t help but wonder where this new branch called health communication is going to go. Will the research actually be applied to change the relationship we have with our doctors? Will it be another passing fad, as seems to be the trend with different sections of communication research. In today, gone tomorrow. What are your thoughts? Can this be beneficial? How?

S. Whitehead