You can watch the American presidential debates and allow Barack Obama and John McCain to move you emotionally, or you can convert what they say into easily-analyzed data structures. C-SPAN’s awesomely wonky graphic designers have created several easy ways for you to analyze as objectively as possible which candidate spoke the longest, interrupted the most, and used the word “taxes” more often. At left, you can see their word frequency chart, looking at which words were used most and when. We also have part of an elaborate chart showing which candidate grandstanded the most on various topics. The beauty part of the chart below is that if you go to C-SPAN’s website it lays out each debate like this, and you can easily mouse through it and click through quickly to videos and transcripts backing up the chart’s claims. I’m telling you, this is pure information crack.
Keywords in the Debate and Timeline [via Information Aesthetics]
