Do trendy words really signify a trend? Is it possible to recognize any trends in political campaigns based on the words that are being used? – Say, which party are you from if you use the word “Energy” the most? And “Reform”? And “Taxes”?*
As this chart from the New York Times shows, the answers aren’t as straightforward as you’d think.
This can be somewhat related to The Economist’s “Recession Index,” which measures the likelihood of a recession based on the number of times the word is mentioned in mainstream media.
It would probably yield more interesting results if these trendy words were filtered through a number of filters. Such as: whether or not the words were being used in a negative/positive, referring to selves/opponents or whether they were talking about the future or about the past (to name a few). Taken over time, the data set might show some notable trends, but that would be quite a bit of data to mull over given the different contexts the word could be used. We’ll see if it happens.
*Democrat, Republican, Republican respectively.
