Visualizing the Roles of Frequent Terms in LTEs Following Two Economic Crisis Trigger Articles

Abstract

The Letters to the Editor (LTEs) written over a twelve-week period after articles reporting the likelihood of sustained impact of two oncoming economic crises (the Oil Crisis of October 1973, and the COVID-19 Crisis beginning in March of 2020) were analyzed for the frequency of terms in both total usage as well as usage in unique LTEs. These terms were scored by multiplying total occurrences with occurrences in unique LTEs and then ranked by score for each of the 12 weeks of the study period. The findings produced sports-team-like ranking-induced shapes along the weekly rankings that can be visually compared with other terms in the same corpus, as well as the same and different terms in other corpora. This study revealed that some of the same terms seemed to have similar curve shapes in both corpora. The study also revealed that some terms, though different between the two corpora, appeared to have the same curve shapes—and perhaps may fulfill similar roles in their respective LTE discourses.