Graphical Trumpian discourse analysis
« previous post | next post »
Ian Prasad Philbrick and Ashley Wu, "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally", NYT 10/8/2024:
The energy for Mr. Trump’s third White House campaign comes from his rallies. Since President Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris took the helm, Mr. Trump has held nearly 20 of them, speaking for about 90 minutes at each.
Like most politicians, he repeats things at every speech. Unlike most politicians, he offers a grim view of the country, makes up nicknames for his opponents and pledges to use the power of the government to punish his rivals.
To help readers experience what a Trump rally is like, we used video to break down the nine themes he consistently returns to.
Those nine "themes" are:
- Savior and protector
- Insults
- Deceits
- The hits
- Political violence
- The Trump agenda
- Digressions
- Anti-democratic statements
- Stumbles
Read the article for the details, as well as clever tableaux of video clips and a cool carpet plot of the theme-weave in his 9/29 Erie PA rally:
I like the general idea, Ashley Wu's graphics are impressive, and it's tempting to use modern topic and sentiment analysis techniques to derive similar things automatically.
But I wonder how good the inter-annotator agreement for the human version of this analysis would be?
One obvious problem is that the "themes" are potentially overlapping — Trump's digressions are often also insults or deceits or threats of violence, etc.; his stumbles can occur in any of the other segments; some of his greatest "hits" are also insults, deceits, or savior/protector assertions; and so on. Furthermore, some of the themes are matters of content or tone (e.g. insults), while others are a question of discourse structure (e.g. digressions) or overall topic statistics (e.g. hits).
Those overlaps and ambiguities will make it easier for an automatic analysis to produce plausible results, but they'll also make the overall results less informative. And while I agree that Donald Trump's rhetorical style is in some ways special, it would be better to demonstrate that with an analysis that positions him in the same space as other speakers.
The cited 9 "themes" can certainly be applied to speeches from other politicians (or other people in general) — but when we start analyzing others, we're going to want additional "themes", and the whole system will need to do a better job of engaging the general problem of discourse analysis.
Still, the article makes sense, and the graphics are great.
Aaron said,
October 9, 2024 @ 11:44 am
My least favorite Rothko period.
Dr. Emilio Lizardo said,
October 9, 2024 @ 3:23 pm
Well, if Trump has done "nearly 20" rallies since Harris "took the helm", over that period Harris surely must have done at least a rally or two that are worthy of this type of analysis; possibly even some including examples of her insightful off-the-cuff comments that are not read from a teleprompter.
Like this one, perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yP7RiA6WO4
Stephen Goranson said,
October 9, 2024 @ 3:37 pm
Dr. Emilio Lizardo, do you really think that example is equivalent to speeches of Trump?
I do not.
Chester Draws said,
October 9, 2024 @ 6:19 pm
I do.
After all, "stumbles" is allowed when Trump is analysed. You don't seem to have an issue there.
Like the "anti-democratic" statements in the original analysis, it all depends on your viewpoint. I'm betting that most of the "anti-democratic" statements would not be considered such if they were uttered by a less demonised politician.
I'm less than impressed with the analysis myself. One of Trump's absolutely go-to features is his attacks on illegal immigration. And yet that isn't even a category?
Barbara Phillips Long said,
October 9, 2024 @ 10:44 pm
@Chester Draws —
Wouldn’t “go-to features “ fit under “The hits”? Thus, immigration does not have to be separately coded because Trump returns to the topic time after time.
I am trying to remember if I have seen any of Trump’s 2024 claims about immigrants being substantiated by fact-checkers. My impression is that Trump’s claims about immigration range from hyperbole to outright untruths. I would classify “they’re not sending their best people” as hyperbole. Trump claims that other countries are emptying their prisons onto U.S. soil , but there seems to be no evidence to back the claim up, and the numbers Trump cites about immigration seem to misrepresent government statistics or to be disconnected from documented numbers. If Trump’s numbers and claims about immigration are *bullshit* instead of reasonably correct, then the topic of immigration can also be included in “Deceits.”
Trump’s stated desire to pursue mass deportations could fit into “political violence” or “The Trump agenda.”
The list reproduced from the original article focuses on categories, not topics. Immigration is a topic that fits several categories.
Thomas said,
October 10, 2024 @ 6:00 am
Now while this method provides pretty pictures and I'm sure that there's even more stuff behind the NYT paywall, I do ask myself: how reductive can one be?
Hallo said,
October 10, 2024 @ 3:21 pm
It's reductive? They color coded the speech's transcript. I'm sure a Trump supporter would color code it differently, but that's more or less to be expected.
Graeme said,
October 15, 2024 @ 5:47 am
Trump has held far fewer rallies than his previous two campaigns. Whether due to age, increased prominence, security or his own insecurity…
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/22/trump-2024-rallies-schedule