How big data can be used to understand major events

With the most unpredictable UK general election looming in modern times, how can big data be used to understand how elections are covered by the media? New research by the University of Bristol has for the first time analysed over 130,000 online news articles to find out how the 2012 US presidential election played out in the media. Academics from the University's Intelligent Systems Laboratory (ISL), led by Nello Cristianni , Professor of Artificial Intelligence, analysed mass media coverage from the 2012 US presidential election using big data. The paper is published in the journal Big Data & Society . This is the first study in which political positions have been automatically obtained from a very large amount of online news. The system created goes well beyond traditional word-association networks with the use of richer linguistic analysis of texts. By analysing the individual campaigns of the main presidential candidates, Obama and Romney, the research team studied how each campaign was represented in the media and found one of the key issues covered by the media during the 2012 campaign was Obama's defence of his record on economic policy. The findings suggest the issues of the Democratic Party the media focused on were the US economy and civil rights.