New Algorithm that detects political “spin”

The New Scientist website has an interesting article talking about political “spin”… and a new algorithm developed to tell who’s doing the most.

The algorithm, which was originally developed to analyze the US Presidential candidates during the last election, has been applied to the Liberal, Conservative and NDP leaders.

The results are perhaps predictable, but interesting none the less…. larger numbers means more spin.

He and his team analysed the usage patterns of 88 deception-linked words within the text of recent campaign speeches from the political leaders. They then determined the frequency of these patterns in each speech, and averaged that number over all of that candidate’s speeches. Martin received a ranking of 124, while Harper and Layton scored 73 and 88, respectively.

Something to chew on in the last few days..

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