‘Bombing’ Word Collocation Force-Directed Graph

First and perhaps most strikingly, the MI score and the frequency of the words “Cambodia” and “Vietnam” in collocation with the word “bombing” differs greatly between the two channels of communication. When Kissinger and his associates were using the word ‘bombing’ in official meetings, it was associated much more with words related to ‘Vietnam’ than in the telephone conversations, in which ‘bombing’ was seen to have a higher MI score (collocation) with the names of other countries in Indochina (Laos, Thailand and Cambodia).

It is unsurprising that Kissinger would use the telephones (as National Security Advisor) as compared to formal meetings to discuss bombing in Indochina, given the differences in his expectations of privacy in those two different fora of conversation. However, more than just a quantitative representation of ‘candor,’ this difference may also suggest an absence of material – ‘Top Secret’ memcons on military aspects of the ‘Cambodia’ topic, for example.

‘Bombing’ Word Correlation Interactive Force-Directed Graph

This is an interactive ‘d3’ version of the force-directed word collocation analysis of the word ‘Bombing’. Currently, the diagram does not take ‘edge weights’ into account, so the nodes within each cluster are placed inexactly.

Until ‘edge weight’ code is completed, static graph above is far more accurate and ‘stable’.