The essay by Daniel Machover, chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, titled “Arrest warrant plans make a mockery of universal jurisdiction” March 30, about changes to the UK’s laws regarding the issuing of arrest warrants for world leaders guilty of crimes against humanity, elicited Guardian reader comments reflecting upon the consequences of this law on the most notorious human rights violators, right? (Libya? The Congo? North Korea? China? Sudan? Iran?) Nope.
While Machover’s narrative did certainly lead his readers in a very clear direction by citing the arrest warrant against Israel’s former FM, Tzipi Livni, early in the essay, he also noted other nations whose leaders would be protected, such as Israel, America, China, and Saudi Arabia.
The beauty of the website Wordle, when reviewing comments following a piece at CiF, is that it allows you to quantify the degree to which such comments beneath the line stray off topic, or slant in one particular egregiously skewed direction.
It allows you to engage in a mass political Rorschach Test of sorts for Guardian readers.
Wordle was fed every word in each of the reader comments posted after Machover’s piece and, excluding commonly used words like “the”, churned out the following graphic of the most used words – represented in a size proportional to the frequency of their usage:
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COMMITTEE FOR ACCURACY IN MIDDLE EAST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS
Guardian Readers’ IOCD (Israel Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) in One Image
The essay by Daniel Machover, chair of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, titled “Arrest warrant plans make a mockery of universal jurisdiction” March 30, about changes to the UK’s laws regarding the issuing of arrest warrants for world leaders guilty of crimes against humanity, elicited Guardian reader comments reflecting upon the consequences of this law on the most notorious human rights violators, right? (Libya? The Congo? North Korea? China? Sudan? Iran?) Nope.
While Machover’s narrative did certainly lead his readers in a very clear direction by citing the arrest warrant against Israel’s former FM, Tzipi Livni, early in the essay, he also noted other nations whose leaders would be protected, such as Israel, America, China, and Saudi Arabia.
The beauty of the website Wordle, when reviewing comments following a piece at CiF, is that it allows you to quantify the degree to which such comments beneath the line stray off topic, or slant in one particular egregiously skewed direction.
It allows you to engage in a mass political Rorschach Test of sorts for Guardian readers.
Wordle was fed every word in each of the reader comments posted after Machover’s piece and, excluding commonly used words like “the”, churned out the following graphic of the most used words – represented in a size proportional to the frequency of their usage:
Like this:
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