Visualizing Senator Paul's Filibuster
Transcripts: they're not just for reading anymore.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Transcripts: they're not just for reading anymore. Yesterday, when I posted the transcript of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan's nomination as CIA Director, I assumed that our readers would appreciate reading what the senator and his colleagues actually said. George Mason University's Rajendra Kulkarni, however, chose to do something far less snooze-worthy and much more visually appealing: graphic visualizations of the words in the transcript. (Click on the individual images to see full-size versions of them.)
First, a word cloud (generated by IBM's Many Eyes cloud computing website):
Next up: a cluster density map:
And finally, a network map, connecting all the words in the transcript together:
The Cluster and network views were generated with VosViewer, freeware developed by a team at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University, formerly from Erasmus Univ (Rotterdam, NL).
Next up: a cluster density map:
And finally, a network map, connecting all the words in the transcript together:
The Cluster and network views were generated with VosViewer, freeware developed by a team at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University, formerly from Erasmus Univ (Rotterdam, NL).
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
