Reporting by Rachel Wise, Jon Doty and Ashton Day.
Electome is a new tool from the Laboratory for Social Machines at the MIT Media Lab that uses data to help capture and analyze social media conversations around the 2016 presidential election.
The system uses machine learning and natural language processing to analyze hundreds of millions of Tweets every day. It then sorts them into categories — from issue to candidate to civility of language — to enable journalists to compare and contrast the prevalence of issues over time.
Rachel Wise is an editor at the Futures Lab at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and co-producer of the weekly Futures Lab video update.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute’s Futures Lab video update features a roundup of fresh ideas, techniques and developments to help spark innovation and change in newsrooms across all media platforms. Visit the RJI website for the full archive of Futures Lab videos, or download the iPad app to watch the show wherever you go. You can also sign up to receive email notification of each new episode.
