I’ve posted a list at the Innovation in College Media Blog of college media outlets and their online bowl coverage, including the obligatory rant about the Bowl “Championship” Series. Check it out. Also, be sure to check out this excellent article by Dan Wetzel about the BCS and a playoff system. I’m particularly fascinated by the hiring of former White House communications director Ari Fleischer’s PR outfit to create an astroturf campaign promoting the BCS. Fleischer is a political animal, not a sports PR pro. My guess is that hiring Fleischer had more to do with potential political ramifications for the BCS than any attempt to sway college football fans.

And I changed the theme because the other one wasn’t working for me.

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The circles represent themes. The larger the circle and the more centrally located, the more central was the theme. Themes that are closer to each other were more closely associated in the answers than other themes.

Semantic Network Analysis of Obama's Second Prime-time press conference. Click for larger image.

Here are the top concepts by mention:

issues 37
think 31
people 30
budget 27
leadership 26
economy 23
simply 18
years 17
health 14
care 14
percent 12
talking 12
growth 12
steps 12
costs 12
American 12

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Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image. Don’t know what this says, but here it is. And this is the transcript. I edited out the MADDOW: and BLAGOJEVICH: parts, also the introductory definitions of the participants.

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I’ve been watching inaugural events all day, and noted the numerous Wordle examinations of the inaugural. Here’s an example of a true semantic network analysis of the inaugural via leximancer, a semantic network analysis software that doesn’t look as cool or as pretty as Wordle, but provides a more quantitative analysis. Leximancer weights the concepts based on their association with various words and provides a map of how the concepts are related (brighter circles equal greater emphasis, for instance).

Some short explanation: the circles represent concepts, the lines represent associations between concepts. The only reason I know about this is because of my dissertation.

Thoughts? Comments?

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The WTF? In Chief

I’ve been working on an interactive graphic for the Obama inauguration. Here’s a preview:

click to see larger version

The idea is, you get a visual representation of all of the things the new president has “on his plate” when he takes office. It might be instructive to compare his “plate” to what previous presidents had on their “plates” when they took office.

Honestly, I probably won’t get this finished by the time the inauguration rolls around (classes starting this week and all), but I might assign it to my interactive reporting class to finish up.

So the WTF in Chief idea would be to have an official appointee whose job it was to explain WTF?!?! to the American people.

Not the press secretary, but someone whose sole job is to respond to the righteous indignation of the American people about the seriously messed up state our nation is at the moment (and if you don’t think we’re in a world of doo-doo, then I don’t even want to deal with your denial of reality). Maybe that’s Obama’s job ultimately, but it might help if we had someone who could respond on a semi-regular basis to commiserate with us.

Someone whose job it would be to explain:

• WTF happened to our $350 billion in bailout money?
• WTF happened to the recovery from Hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Rita?
• WTF is going to happen to those who authorized torture at Guantanamo Bay?
• WTF is going on in Iraq?

etc. See this report from the Center for Public Integrity for a list of 128 major meltdowns in the executive branch over the last 8 years. I think you get the picture.

The idea also got me to thinking about a similar position newspapers could adopt – think of it as sort of the ombudsperson for the financial meltdown. We already have Alan Mutter doing this from the outside, and others who are content to lob information from the outside, but wouldn’t it be a good thing for some newspaper company execs to come out and lay everything on the line for their loyal readers and “stakeholders” (I hate that word)?

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And, yes, Joe The Plumber’s web site sucks.

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I am not sure if this is a sign that Twitter has gotten to the point of performing an aerial maneuver over a large cartilagenous fish, but California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been on Twitter since October.

But the real problem with the presence is that it’s obvious this is just a tool for some PR lackey to put out press releases. Would the real governor refer to himself in the third person as in this tweet:

Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation Banning Use of Electronic Text Messaging Devices While Driving http://gov.ca.gov/press-rel…

The Governor also isn’t following anybody. Seems you’d want to at least follow some of the other leaders of the California government.

I don’t have a problem with marketing and political types using social media to spread their messages. Really, it’s their playground too. But if you’re going to enter the arena, at least adhere to the rules of the road. Engagement with the broader community is at the root of social media.

Don’t use Twitter like a broadcast medium.

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Coming from Texas, living right next door to Louisiana, I thought I’d seen it all when it came to state political corruption. Little did I know…

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Open-ended question that I can’t even begin to answer: Is an upsurge in liberal sentiment driving the traffic growth to liberal sites? Or do sites like Huffpo and Daily Kos deserve some of the credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) for the current pro-Democratic trend in politics?

Interesting numbers posted by paidContent about the top political weblogs this campaign season. Just for fun, I coded the sites along political leanings (red-conservative, blue-liberal/progressive, black-objective/centrist):

  Total Unique Visitors (000)
                                 Sep-2007        Sep-2008      % Change
Total Internet: Total Audience  181,858         189,468             4
HUFFINGTONPOST.COM                  792           4,545           474
POLITICO.COM                        532           2,362           344
DRUDGEREPORT.COM                  1,215           2,059            70
REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM               192           1,129           489
FREEREPUBLIC.COM                  1,022             987            -3
Capitol Advantage                   794             959            21
DAILYKOS.COM                        192             923           381
TOWNHALL.COM                        407             884           117
NEWSBUSTERS.ORG                     113             732           547
WORLDNETDAILY.COM                   411             636            55
TALKINGPOINTSMEMO.COM                32             458         1,321
MICHELLEMALKIN.COM                  103             247           140
REDSTATE.COM                         38             235           514
CROOKSANDLIARS.COM                  122             218            79
RAWSTORY.COM                        219             212            -3
POLLSTER.COM                        N/A             194           N/A
MEDIAMATTERS.ORG                    145             178            23
FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM                 N/A             169           N/A
CQPOLITICS.COM                      N/A             139           N/A
AMERICABLOG.COM                     N/A             104           N/A

The results:

Conservative: 8 (5,992)
Liberal/Progressive: 7 (6,595)
Objective/Centrist: 5 (4,783)

A pretty even breakdown between conservatives and liberal/progressives (although Huffingtonpost.com represents a majority of the liberal/conservative traffic. Obviously, all these blogs are benefiting from the intense scrutiny of this historic election.

Rafit Ali asks an important question:

And while these numbers are in and of itself interesting, the biggest question for any of them is what happens the day after?

I suspect many of these sites will do well in the coming year, although certainly not as well as they are doing during the campaign season. Remember that many of these sites (Daily Kos or RedState, for instance) have an agenda, and the agenda doesn’t stop with the election  – especially not this election season, with the economy, war, and health insurance promising to be at the forefront of the next president’s agenda.

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For the past five days, I’ve been riveted by the media frenzy over vice presidential pick Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. What strikes me most is the way the media – print, tv, radio, online – have rushed to fill in the details on the sketchy knowledge available about the candidate.

They say that nature abhors a vacuum. I would suggest that the media abhors a vacuum even more. Since the announcement, we’ve learned about Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy, “Troopergate,” her support for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” her husband’s involvement in the Alaska Independence Party, her lobbying for federal funds for local project, her role in a 527 for Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, and who knows what will turn up in the days to come.

Also fascinating was the Wikipedia battle that arose from the appearance of a user “YoungTrig,” who began editing Palin’s Wikipedia entry the day before the announcement. Check out this NPR story for more details on that angle.

What to make of all this? Certainly there has been a rush from both the G.O.P. and the Democrats to “define” Palin one way or the other. But the definition is hinging on the reporting of media outlets and bloggers, responding to a wide-open v.p. pick with the type of reporting you probably wouldn’t have seen had the pick been a “known quantity” like Min. Gov. Pawlenty or former presidential aspirant Mitt Romney.

It’s too soon to see what damage all these revelations might have on the McCain campaign, but it’s fascinating to watch the media in action. Naturally, the McCain campaign has complained that the media are being “vicious and scurrilous” in their Palin stories.

I don’t really see that as the case. The media are doing their job. They are retroactively vetting the McCain vice presidential pick. They did the same to a lesser extent with Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s pick. But Biden was a known entity. He’d been a presidential candidate twice, and a senator for a long time. If Obama (who has had his own taste of the media scrutiny) had picked a little-known governor from a small (population) state, he’d have witnessed the same intense scrutiny of his pick.

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