Text Mining: Do the Debates Matter?
Being in the midst of the debates, as we are today, it would be hard to read through any newspaper or watch the nightly news without hearing of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. Pundits and analysts are quick to jump on every word, interruption, and perceived mistake in order to determine who “won.” With this in mind, our group The Instigators, aim to analyze all possible information in order to see if the debates truly make a difference. Many believe that at this point in the campaign cycle, most voters have already decided well in advance who they plan on voting for; however, for those still on the fence, could the debates truly sway them in either direction?
Given these circumstances, data mining will serve as an invaluable tool in the examination of the countless information released in response to the debates. Finding the correlations between live-real-time reactions from online sources such as Twitter, Facebook, and various RSS feeds, will shed light on the question of voter-impact. It is imperative to approach this question on importance of the debates from many different angles, in order to provide a more nuanced response to a complex question. While many individual sources will claim to provide their own idea of the “winner” of each debate, the general data that will be received by our group may in fact not be as simple as yes/no, Democrat/Republican.
As a sub-focus, it may also be important to mine data regarding third party candidates and their lack of inclusion in all of the debates.
Indeed, the debates create a flurry of data production, and text mining is data mining is one way to make sense of it all. Using the approach that you describe, how might you account for both the short and long term effects of the debates on voter preferences and voter action? Is there a way of parsing the data to determine how the events of the debate work together or against other forces influencing voters?