General Inquirer

1. General Inquirer Rachel Campbell, Shawna Jackson, Lisa Tselebidis

2. General Inquirer: Basics • Created by Philip Stone in the 1960s • Homepage: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~inquirer/ • Provides a word count • Uses the Harvard IV-4 dictionary and Lasswell dictionary content analysis categories • A total of 182 dictionary categories • http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~inquirer/homecat.htm • Five categories based on social cognition work of Semin and Fiedler • User can also create customized dictionaries

3. General Inquirer: Basics • Limited version can be found at: http://www.webuse.umd.edu:9090/ • Full version can be obtained through Dr. Neuendorf or found in the CATI lab for Cleveland State University students

4. General Inquirer: Harvard IV-4 categories - Examples • Reflect Charles Osgood’s semantic differential findings • Basic language universals • Pstv – 1045 positive words • Subset of 557 words are tagged Affil – indicates affiliation or supportiveness • Ngtv – 1160 negative words • Subset of 833 words are tagged Hostile – indicates attitude or concern with hostility and aggressiveness

5. General Inquirer: Harvard IV-4 categories • Strong – 1902 words implying strength • Subset of 689 words tagged Power – indicate concern with power, control, or authority • Weak – 755 words implying weakness • Subset of 284 words tagged Submit – indicate submission, dependence, vulnerability, withdrawal • Active – 2045 words implying active orientation • Passive – 911 words indicating passive orientation

6. General Inquirer: Lasswell value dictionaries • Four deference domains: power, rectitude, respect, affiliation • Four welfare domains: wealth, well-being, enlightenment, skill • Example of Power: • PowGain = Power Gain, 65 words about power increasing • PowLoss = Power Loss, 109 words of power decreasing • PowEnds = Power Ends, 30 words about the goals of the power process • PowAren = Power Arenas, 53 referring to political places and environments (not nation-states)

7. General Inquirer: Purpose • Purpose: Analyze content of three different reports on the Republican primary debate from September 22, 2011 • CNN (national) • Cleveland Plain Dealer (local) • San Jose Mercury News (local)

8. General Inquirer: Instructions • Before we get started… • Input • Convert all of your articles in to .txt files • Place all .txt files in a folder called “testdir”, and save it to the General Inquirer folder • Output • Create a blank excel sheet titled Output.xls and save it to the General Inquirer folder

9. General Inquirer: Instructions Main screen

10. General Inquirer: Instructions - Input • Type “testdir” in the Input field if it not already there

11. General Inquirer: Instructions - Output • Click Browse and locate the output.xls file • Note: no changes are made to the Dictionary field.

12. General Inquirer: Instructions - Run • Once your Input and Output are set, click Run.

13. General Inquirer: Instructions – Results • Relocate the Output.xls file and click open

14. General Inquirer: Instructions – Results – Tags (example shows one case only)

15. General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Tags

16. General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Tags • The news articles used mostly strong and active words • Weak and submissive words were rarely used • Overall, results are what one would expect of a candidate in a debate • He or she will want to appear strong and capable with faith in his or her ideals

17. General Inquirer: Instructions – Word Count • Use the same process as Tags, but make sure the Words option is selected

18. General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Word Count

19. General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Word Count • The most used words relevant to the debate were: candidate, debate, Florida, security, social, state, Perry, Romney • The most used words overall were: the, are, to, of, said… • A limitation of the word count is that you have to scan the results to eliminate unnecessary words