"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile—and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: Not necessarily to Win, but mainly to keep from Losing Completely."
—Hunter S. Thompson
Interesting research:
A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.
Such a "sentiment analysis" is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.
This kind of thing could actually be a good idea. For example, it could be used to help the administration understand how we are viewed by people in other countries, and make us more responsible players on the world stage as a result.
On the other hand, this kind of thing could also be used to track critics of the U.S., and to aid in media manipulation. It is not unusual for government leaders to punish reporters who do not provide favorable coverage by excluding them from important events and key briefings, and this could facilitate that. At the very least, it would have a chilling effect on worldwide freedom of the press.
Note also that the project director says that the system would not extend to domestic news sources:
It could take several years for such a monitoring system to be in place, said Joe Kielman, coordinator of the research effort. The monitoring would not extend to United States news, Mr. Kielman said.
But a few paragraphs later:
The articles in the database include work from many American newspapers and news wire services, including The Miami Herald and The New York Times, as well as foreign sources like Agence France-Presse and The Dawn, a newspaper in Pakistan.
So, G. Orwell was right, and we can kiss the Constitution and the Bill of Rights goodbye. Hello 1984.
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Comments: 8
When I worked for the ad agency, we looked at this study closely because, while conducting research in Spain, we found a great deal of animosity toward the US by Spaniards, unexpectedly. The study we conducted suggested that the Spanish differentiate between the US government and the US people, US military force and US products and services. That's an important distinction, since not all that long ago we saw a backlash against prominent US brands due to our foreign policy.
Major PR firms already have software that does what you describe. The software looks intelligently for key words adjacent to other key words to ascribe "valence" (positive or negative stance) and assigns points to the story based upon positive or negative valence and the strength of that stance.
Across periods of time, specific topics or for specific people or companies, you can look at the ebb and flow of this analysis to discern what's being said, by whom and how that changes over time.
well, one would think so judging by the statements, eh?
I know these folks are dangerous and pigs. All pigs. Ozzie called 'em War Pigs.