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Showing posts from February, 2006

Measuring Political Spin

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Thursday, 2nd February, 2006 Measuring political spin is the latest tool for followers of politics. Professor David Skillicorn of Canada's Queens University used a new computer algorithm to study speeches during the country's recent election campaign. Prof Skillicorn found that defeated Prime Minister Paul Martin, of the Liberal Party, spun the subject matter of his speeches dramatically more than Conservative Party leader, Stephen Harper, and the New Democratic Party leader, Jack Layton. According to a report on the New Scientists website, "spin", in this case, is defined as “text or speech where the apparent meaning is not the true belief of the person saying or writing it”. Prof Skillington 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.