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  • The Atlantic

    A Computer’s Hot Take on the 2016 Election

    An artificial intelligence found Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton seemed to get “happier” coverage than Donald Trump. But is that evidence of media bias? Not necessarily.
    by Adrienne LaFrance Oct 19, 2016 5 minutes
    Source: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Getty

    Donald Trump’s message of the week, in case you’ve somehow managed to avoid it, is that the election is rigged by a corrupt (and apparently monolithic) media. “The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary,” Trump wrote in a tweet on Sunday night. Trump has said repeatedly he’s been treated unfairly by news organizations. But is that true?

    Back in July, I asked the computer scientist Andy Reagan if he could help me design an experiment that might begin to gauge the tone of media coverage about various presidential candidates. I knew Reagan, who is working toward his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Vermont, from into how a computer identified the six main arcs in storytelling across literary fiction., all ranked by how “happy” they were perceived to be. (The happiest word on their list: Laughter. The saddest: Terrorist.)

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