State of the Union Messages to the Congress are mandated by Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution which states, "He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient". Since 1790 State of the Union messages have been delivered regularly at approximately 1 year intervals (Source: The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou.php#axzz274c0J8EF ). The State of the Union Message is delivered near the beginning of each session of Congress and it is a report on the condition of the country and a platform for presidents to outline their legislative agenda and their priorities. They have over the years emerged as a communication between the president and the people of the United States. The messages are available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/sou.php#axzz274c0J8EF. We are interested to examine what President Barack Obama and past President George Bush have been stressing in their speeches. We used Texttexture (http://textexture.com/) to visualize the State of the Union Messages by President George Bush (2005-08) and President Barack Obama (2009-2012). The network visualisations and results from Texttexure are given below. Each network has an average of 100 words (nodes) and about 1000 edges (co-occurrences). In the network graphs below, the words are the nodes and their co-occurrences are the connections between them.
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President Barack Obama - 2009 |
President Barack Obama - 2010 |
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Most influential keywords: American, Year, Economy, America
Most influential contexts:
#0: american people bank country
#1: year economy crisis energy
#2: america time make large
#3: job million create industry |
Most influential keywords : Year, American, Job, Work
Most influential contexts:
#0: year deficit decade office
#1: american work people time
#2: job america economy nation
#3: business tax small cut |
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President Barack Obama - 2011 |
President Barack Obama - 2012 |
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Most influential keywords in this text: Job, Year, People, American
Most influential contexts:
#0: job people american tax
#1: year work country school
#2: america nation place energy
#3: make business support republican |
Most influential keywords in this text: American, Job, Business, Tax
Most influential contexts:
#0: american year work million
#1: job business create back
#2: tax company pay debt
#3: america country state build |
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President George Bush - 2005 |
President George Bush - 2006 |
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Most influential keywords in this text: Make, People, Freedom, America
Most influential contexts:
#0: make american citizen good
#1: people freedom america iraq
#2: security year great million
#3: government child retirement account |
Most influential keywords in this text: America, World, American, Freedom
Most influential contexts:
#0: america lead life require
#1: world american people nation
#2: freedom hope great iraqi
#3: year science effort cut |
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President George Bush - 2007 |
President George Bush - 2008 |
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Most influential keywords in this text: America, Iraq, American, People
Most influential contexts:
#0: america citizen nation united
#1: iraq government force oil
#2: american people health free
#3: tonight congress country law |
Most influential keywords in this text: American, Congress, People, Year
Most influential contexts:
#0: american people nation future
#1: congress good million agreement
#2: year america enemy state
#3: iraq terrorist iraqi force |
