> Download State(s) of the Nation (PDF, 281KB)
A think piece on state of the nation by Ronji Tanielu, Policy Analyst for the Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit.
Have you heard of a word cloud? Word clouds are a popular piece of software that provides visual representations of text data1. Word clouds, also known as data or tag clouds, have become a simple and useful tool used to communicate key messages based on a speech, document, report or other body of information.
Over the last two months, the leaders of the two major political parties in New Zealand have both delivered their now-annual (and rather grand-sounding) “State of the Nation” speeches. These speeches are seemingly modelled off the annual State of the Union speech that the American President delivers to their Congress and the entire nation. In February, The Salvation Army also released its eighth annual (and also rather grand-sounding) State of the Nation report looking at the social progress of New Zealand across 22 social progress indicators or sets of data.
Rather than re-hash in great detail the two speeches and one report, we have decided to present the content of these speeches, and report introduction, in the form of word clouds