Table of Contents
Introduction
In this paper, the voyeur toolset is used in analysis of the Chernobyl newspaper articles of the New York Times in different time periods. The time under consideration include 1986, 1990, 2000 and 2014. The news that is covered include the different stories that concern Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The stories here are analyzed using different Voyeur tools. The findings of the study are documented and the differences that emerge are captured in the articles. The analysis of the text I did using the cirrus, bubbles and links.
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Upon doing the analysis, a written report submission was done. The report in this case includes the critical reflection on the different tools that I used. The report includes what it is good for, the places where the value may be limited. Further, graphics are also used to help in explaining certain elements of the report. The analysis include the inference that is made from the analysis rather than just the results. This ideally helps in giving the text the correct interpretation.
Mostly used words
In the first article the summary of the report by Voyeur tool indicates that 65 total words and 63 unique word forms have been used. The vocabulary density of the 0.969 followed by 32.5 average words per sentences. However, the most frequently used words in the corpus are only two U.S and The World both which have only been repeated twice in the article. The two words therefore, shows that article was not only meant to address the U.S readers, but also to expose to the world a deeper understanding concerning the dangers of Chernobyl and how it is affecting people both in the United States and in the world (Barringer Felicity, 1986). Other important words that also appear in the text are shown from the view of sub-tools, Cirrus and Bubbles in the table below.
Voyant tools in the second article shows that the corpus entails 84 total words and 76 unique words forms. The vocabulary density is 0.905, and the average words per sentence are 28.0. However, the Cirrus view of the article shows six words as more prominent. Some of such words include arts, books, garelik, Chernobyl, Glenn, and U.S. Since both of these words have been repeated twice in the article they make the article to sound as straight forward piece that elaborate Chernobyl Syndrome affects both the political, economical and social factors of human life. According to Petryna, (2013) The words have been creatively used to demonstrate the dangers of Chernobyl to the residents of Soviet. According to Petryna, (2013). Other words that have also been used are shown in the diagram below through cirrus tool.
The rating of the article three performed tremendously well in Voyant tools due to its deeper analysis to revisit Chernobyl historical impact and how it is still being used today. The corpus record the total number of words as 827 followed by 428 unique word forms. The vocabulary density stands at 0.518 which is reasonable enough to enable the reader to understand the context of the article without much struggle. The average words per sentence are 20.2 this exposes how the words have been used systematically within the sentences to build detailed paragraphs with useful information (Linnemann, 1987). The Corpus view of the article shows different words as more prominent compared to others words. For instance, these pairs of words have been repeated eleven times and seven times respectively, reactors and Chernobyl, and Soviet and continue as shown in the diagram below.
Corpus displays a total of 3169 words and 1059 unique word forms that have been used in the article four. The vocabulary density, in this case, is o.334 followed by the average words per sentence being 19.2. According to the display shown in article 4 image below. The word said and arch are repeated 28 and 26 respectively mostly with the intention to explains how a team of engineers came together, combined their heads to build a huge arch, sheathed in areas of obtaining stainless steel and adequate to protect the Statue of Liberty as noted by Henry Fountain (2014)
Time difference
Even though the analysis included four articles to find out the manner in which different words have been used, words repeated and vocabularies employed to construct a text. However, the results vary due to some factors. The first one was the timing when the articles were written. For instance, the first article was written in 1986, the second one in 1990, the third one in 2000 and the last one in 2014. Meaning that time has a significant impact on dictating the content of the text and the selection of the topic to be used in the article.
Due to the difference in time, it is very difficult to analyze the work of different authors using the same technique, tools or sub-tools. This is because the content of each article varies depending on nature of information which the writer is interested to pass across to the readers. Although it is evident that both the four readers talk about the same topic of “Chernobyl” the manner in which they express their opinions is greatly influenced with the time factor, writers reasoning capacity, and most importantly the seriousness of the issue they are exposing.
Time differences can further be attributed to the various author backgrounds and perception of issues. This is because the four articles were written by different authors and there is no way they could record the same result since every writer reasons differently (Petryna, 2013). That simple understanding explains the reason why the total number of words and unique word forms increases from the first article to the last article from the results of both bubble lines and cirrus sub tools.
Analysis
The words increases from the first article to the fourth article in the manner depicted as 65, 84, 827 and 3169. Again these are the orders of unique word forms from the first article to the last one 63, 76, 428, and 1059. From the above figures, we can easily say that the number of words and unique word forms kept on increasing with time because the writers became more knowledge concerning the Chernobyl. Thus it broadens their imagination and understanding from what they learn previous or experienced in one way or the other especially from different countries such as the Soviet Union. (Garelik Glenn, 1990) noted that the tendency of the words and unique words kept on increasing due to the seriousness of the matter on the issue of discussion. The trend is further supported by the writer`s wealth of knowledge, environmental change including political, and economical factors which are greatly influenced with Chernobyl demerits.
The vocabulary density also appears to have more weight in the four articles. For example, Vocabulary density ranges from 0.969, 0.905, 0.518 and 0.334 from the first article to the last one. Using the old mentality, we can argue that may be the traditional authors believed that using heavy vocabulary was a sign of respect and good mastery of the subject of the discussion thus why the vocabulary density in the first and second article is so high. However, compared to the third and fourth article the vocabulary density is very minimal due to the difference in years of writing. With this trend, we can, therefore, assume that as the days go by, the vocabulary density will continue to reduce because people are only interested in the information you want to pass across not how perfect you use ambiguous vocabularies. The trend in vocabulary density further demonstrate how it is very easy to understand the message in article three and four due to their simplicity and detailed research of the contents.
For every sentence, the average words greatly varies. In the first article for instance, the average words per sentence are 32.5, 28.0 in the second text, 20.2 in the third article and 19.2 in the fourth article. This represents a reducing trend as years keeps on changing. (Wynne, 1989)An average sentence should have between 15-20 words, but if your style is breezy 15 words per sentence would be a good fit. Unfortunately, a long row of sentences starting from 21.0 words long per sentence can make your writing dull, borrowing or irrelevant this is the main reason why it’s hard to understand the writings in the first two articles. Again a lot of grammatical rules have been substantially obeyed and incorporated in the last two articles.
Most frequent words in the corpus is another factor that differentiates the four articles. In the first article, only U.S and world are the words that have been repeated twice the rest have been repeated only once. In the second article, only six words have been repeated twice while the rest have only been repeated once. However, in the third and fourth article, there are some most frequent words in the corpus as shown in the above diagrams. Interestingly, the view by Cirrus tends to record the same results across all the articles by displaying the words that have frequently been repeated in the text with bold prints. In contrary, bubble lines result record different results across the pieces. For example, the bubble lines in the first article extend up to 7, while in the second, third, and fourth article it extends up to 10, 42 and 122 respectively thus explaining why the total number of words and unique word forms kept on increasing from the first to the last article. Furthermore, it explains why most frequent words in the corpus are very high in the third and fourth article.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is evident from the above analysis that voyant tools plays a major role in web based text analysis together with visualization environment for corpus texts. In addition, it provides a number of tools such as Links, Bubblelines, Phrases and Cirrus tool through which an article can be analysed and deeply understood in different ways. Through the use of two common sub tools such as Bubblelines and Cirrus it is evident that the tool can accommodate huge amount of documents with significant ease and speed. This is the main reason why the result in article three and article four recorded reasonable solutions and data that was important for analysis of this paper. Besides it positivity, the demerit of the tool is that it blocks the texts to be amended, paused or started to appear like documents in other programs due to its web-based nature. Therefore, for future accurate analysis of results it is very important if large texts or words are incorporated.
- Barringer, F. (1986). CHERNOBYL ‘RADIATION AND BURNS’ HAVE KILLED SIX, MOSCOW REPORTS. The New York Times. Retrieved from << http://www.nytimes.com/1986/05/13/world/chernobyl-radiation-and-burns-have-killed-six-moscow-reports.html>>
- Fountain, H. (2014). Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe. The New York Times. Retrieved from << https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html>>
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- Petryna, A. (2013). Life exposed: biological citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton University Press.
- Wynne, B. (1989). Sheepfarming after Chernobyl: A case study in communicating scientific information. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 31(2), 10-39