Making discoveries through using "word clouds"

Word clouds (also called "tag clouds") are used for various purposes. They can be just decorative, but they can also reveal various things about text used to create the cloud. The following two word clouds were created from Greenpeace's page on Japanese whaling:

Greenpeace, . "Japanese Whaling." Greenpeace International. 2011. Web. 2 Jun 2011. <http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/>.

You'll notice that Greenpeace emphasizes that it is "the Japanese" who are doing the whaling. "Southern Ocean," another way of saying the Antarctic Ocean, also appears many times, and so does the word sanctuary. This suggests that Greenpeace wants to stress that Japan is sending their whaling vessels to the southern ocean, which was designated as a sanctuary for whales and other sea life.
 
The following word clouds were made using the Q & A page of the Japan Whaling Association, a pro-whaling publicity page that tries to present the whalers' perspective on the whaling issue.

JWA. "Questions & Answers about Whaling." Official Home Page of the Japan Whaling Association. The Japan Whaling Association (JWA), 2011. Web. 3 Jun 2011. < http://www.whaling.jp/english/qa.html >.

 

 You can see from the word clouds that "research" is emphasized and they are trying to promote the idea that the whales are being caught for "scientific" purposes. Unlike, the word "hunt," which is fairly prominent in the Greenpeace word cloud, the more benign "catches" appears 11 times in the JWA web page.