The State of the Union in Words

The New York Times once again shows it’s capable of producing some very interesting flash content, today’s culprit: The State of the Union in Words which lets you find how often and in what context words or phrases were used in the last six state of the union addresses and one ‘state of the union’ in early 2001 by the benevolent Mr. Bush.

The word “terror” has been been a frequent guest, between 20 and 34 mentions per address post September 11th. “Health care” peaked in 2004 with 9 mentions, but has remained scant since then. The word “surplus” appeared seven times in his first speech, but has shockingly disappeared from the horizon since then.

“Climate change” got a mention in 2007, its first.

3 Responses to “The State of the Union in Words”

  1. sieber says:

    Can you find the blog that first did the analysis?

  2. liam says:

    I came across it on the Guardian:

    http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2007/01/25/word_count_my_word_count.html

    I would guess that there’s hundreds of blog posts referencing both the flash tool and the text of the state of the union.

    Is there a specifically interesting analysis you know of?