Perception Metrics, a service of Social Science Automation, Inc., launched the ObamaMeter in January of 2010. The ObamaMeter demonstrates several important capabilities of our text analysis software and services.

• Automation - The ObamaMeter best demonstrates the power of automated text analysis - no human could accurately and consistently produce analysis of this volume of text in this short time frame.
• High volume processing - The ObamaMeter is capable of processing a very large volume of documents on an ongoing basis in a short period of time.
• Targeted tone analysis - The ObamaMeter technology can recognize both direct and indirect references to a target. It then identifies words that have a positive or negative connotation and are also grammatically connected to the target. All of these references are then aggregated into a score - how positive or negative the media are about Obama on a given day.
• Social Science Automation and Perception Metrics offer many additional tools to our clients. Please visit the Social Science Automation website to learn more.

The ObamaMeter offers a non-partisan look at the tone of the media towards President Obama in various media outlets. We track a range of print and online sources that represent a diversity of geographic regions and demographic groups, including the top 5 newspapers by circulation in the US and the most prominent news-producing websites. We then analyze the text using our Profiler Plus text analysis software to produce an Obama Tone Score. You can view this score in a variety of ways:

• Want the latest and quickest snapshot of the tone of the media towards Obama? Just take a look at the “ObamaMeter Daily Gauge”


• Maybe you are more interested in the differences in perception of Obama as reported by The New York Times vs. The Wall Street Journal, then check out the “Obama Tone By Source” Report.


• Or, do you want an over time analysis of the tone of the media towards Obama since his Inauguration and how it has changed in media reporting overall? Then, the “Obama Tone Over Time” Report is for you.

Could data like this be useful for your organization, candidate or client? We serve clients in a number of industries and offer customized text analysis services to meet their needs. Click here or give us a call at 614.527.5200 ext. 115 to speak with an Analyst about a program that might work for you.

We welcome your visit, please bookmark us and come back often!

About Our Sources

We've selected a range of print and online sources that represent a diversity of geographic regions and demographic groups. Included in this list are the top 5 newspapers by circulation in the US and the most prominent news-producing websites. We were limited to those sources that generated sufficient data for analysis and were provided to us in .xml format from eNR, our media source provider.

We have access to and get daily feeds from thousands of publications, interested in different publications for your analysis? Just ask, we likely have what you are looking for.

About Our Tone Score Calculation

The Tone Score is a measurement of how positive or negative the media collection is towards Barack Obama on a given day. It compares positive messages about Obama to all words about Obama, positive, negative, and neutral. It can be as high as 1.0, meaning that, on that day, Obama was only connected to positive messages. A score of 0.0 is the opposite – only negative messages associated with Barack Obama in the time period analyzed.

About our News Feed and Updates

Daily postings being at 9:00am for the previous day. Processing typically ends by 2:00pm.