Affective Article Analysis

In Terms of Meaning

Our media landscaped is shaped by different perspectives on any given issue. What choice of words frames political debate in online media?

The media landscape consists of different views on various topics. The way of reporting has a direct impact on the discussion on a topic. This includes not only the content of an article itself, but also its wording. To explore the impact of media and to compare it across the political spectrum, we selected four online magazines: Slate Magazine, Huffington Post, Blaze Magazine, and Breitbart News. In December 2016 and January 2017, we scraped 1000 articles for each magazine for further analysis. The first tests compared the emergence of certain combinations of terms quantitatively. For example, the terms "hillary" and "email" were most commonly used by Breitbart News – a conservative outlet.

Affective Word Ratings

A catalog of word evaluations, which classifies words by estimation of many subjects in three dimensions builds the basis for our further analysis. In this way, the emotional impact of an article can be measured and objectively compared. The results of our analysis can be found in several visualizations, which make it possible to generate clear images from the examined 4000 articles.
 

Take a look at the analysis: Affective Articles: DataViz Website