The Neiman Journalism Lab ...
Category: polling
The Neiman Journalism Lab ran a piece yesterday by Sam Petulla on the increasing use of "sentiment analysis" in journalism. If the term is unfamiliar, the practice probably isn't. It's the use of such things a Facebook comments and analytical software to separate positive comments from negative ones, and to see how they correlate with, say, the results of an election.
Petulla doesn't do much in the way of explaining how such analysis is conducted, but he does show that its use is increasing, and that it offers both promise and peril. "What’s interesting about the use of sentiment analysis by...
Dan Balz of The Washington Post did an interesting story over the weekend, or so I thought initially. With all the polls showing a trend toward Obama, and the election only weeks away, what do political scientists...
Dan Balz of The Washington Post did an interesting story over the weekend, or so I thought initially. With all the polls showing a trend toward Obama, and the election only weeks away, what do political scientists say about who will win?
I'm not sure that expert are going to have the inside track on things, but I thought it would be interesting to hear what they had to say.
Balz began with numbers and percentages from people with impressive academic titles, and I was wrapped up in it until I got to the sixth graf. "Their projection, made 299 days before the election..."
What? They made these projections last year? Who cares what somebody thought last year; we didn't even know who the Republican nominee would be.
I felt misled. Balz might have better left all of this to moulder in the academic journal in which he found it. Or if...
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