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/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/ 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.  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.  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