TEXT ANALYSIS: "THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL"

   When Gorbachev came into power and the Cold War started to thaw. It was patently evident that Germany would be unified. The Berlin Wall was chosen to be the first symbol of reunification. It had to go. As rumors spread across Germany of the boarders opening, a press release from an Italian journalist Riccardo Ehrman, (the Berlin correspondent of ANSA news agency) confirmed that the checkpoints along the East West boundary had been opened "As far as I know effective immediately, without delay"(Nov. 9, 1989).



   After hearing this news, East Germans began gathering at the Wall, demanding that the border guards immediately open the gates. The overwhelming number of citizens surprised the guards at the gates' checkpoints. No guard or official wanted to take responsibility for ordering the opening of the gates, so soldiers were given no orders and didn't know what to do. As the gates got more and more crowded the guards Finally gave up trying to hold back the masses, and so opened the gates. Thousands of East Berliners immediately rushed into West Berlin. The separation and oppression of Berlin was finally over.

   Word spread like a wild fire across the world. Every News agency across the globe wanted coverage of this momentous event. It was the opening of the Gates that marked the end of of the Cold War. Journalists from the United States, were first on the scene in Berlin to get coverage on the actual tearing down of the wall. Big News agencies like ABC and NBC were there to film and write about this land mark event in history.

   This historic event was observed and highlighted by all the world press. The NewYork Times throughout the month of November 1989, headlined  the Fall of the Berlin Wall in many editions. For the purpose of this project, I have compiled four newspaper articles written by the NewYork Times and subjected them for text analysis and visualization through the 'ManyEyes Text Analysis' application. Through the use of ManyEyes, I have created both a Word Cloud and a Word Tree, both of which I will expand on below and provide an analysis.

   for my first step of my text analysis, I downloaded the four articles off the NewYork Times website that were written in November 1989 when the Wall fell. Then I synthesized all the documents into one large document and analyzed this document with the ManyEyes program. After that, for my first task I created a word cloud in order to understand and identify some key phrases that wold help me get a general idea of the themes associated with the destruction of the Wall. The Word Cloud or Wordle is presented below:

     Analyzing the Wordle, I noticed words such as; "Revolution", "History", "Fall", "United" and "crossing" come up frequently. All these words relate to freedom and a start of a new era. Also I saw words such as: "Cold" (relating to Cold War), "Soviet"(relating to the Soviet Union) and "war"(relating to the Cold War) which are all elements that had either ended or was no longer applicable as a result of the "destruction" of the Berlin Wall. When observing these words it paints a picture of happy faces as they run across to West Berlin to start a new life. A life with freedom of speech and a freedom of movement and occupation. Taking what I gathered from the word cloud, I put my information into the Word Tree program. By Using Word Tree I was able to go even further in analyzing the text.


    When I picked a very insignificant word from the Word Tree that I thought would relate to the destruction of the Berlin Wall, I was surprised by my results. Only two of the branching sentences were about the Berlin Wall as it relates to revolution. The remaining references were totally off topic. For example; the 1956 Suez crisis, this Historical event has nothing to do with the Berlin Wall. This is why is was so surprised to see it in my results. Most of the results related to pre- not post WW2 events. what I learned from the Word Trees results were that revolution had nothing to do with the destruction of the Berlin Wall. The word "Revolution" is more customarily used for wars and Communist revolutions. Note that all the big words found on the Wordle were mostly locations and dates. Note that the word freedom is no bigger than revolution on the cloud.

(I couldn't fit the whole picture in because sentences were to long.)


   The next key word I put into the Word Cloud program was "fall". Unlike the surprisingly inaccurate results that I got from "revolution", my results for "Fall" were very accurate. Most of the sentences related to the fall of the Soviet powers in Berlin. There were also sentences that related directly to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The best sentence I got from my analysis on "Fall" was; "The fall of the Wall was the first step toward German unification". This is a great quote because it summarises what the Wall stood for and what changed when it was torn down. To this date, the mere mention of the word "the Wall" will get people to associate the word with the division between East and West Germany and the end of an era.

(Once again, can't fit whole pic in, sentences were too long.)

   The final word I typed into the program was "crossing" as in crossing from East Berlin to west Berlin. Most of the results for this word search yielded information about East Germans trying to escape over the Wall; or about confrontations of West Berlin forces with East Berlin forces which wold usually end in a stalemate. The results for "crossing" really reflected well on the struggle people had trying to be free and be with their loved ones on the other side. Security around the Wall was tight and guards were told to shot on site. East Berliners came up with ingenious ways to get across like "crossing through the holes" that were made in the wall.

(sentences too large, could not fit on page)



    Overall I was happy with the results I got from my key word searches. Except for the ones I got for the word "revolution". Although the word "revolution" did not yield any significant information or insights, my other searches were very informative and on topic. The other two key words had a sufficient amount of information on the Berlin wall in 1989. The key word "crossing", summarized the struggle people had to get across the wall to escape Communism. The word "fall" helped explain events leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. What surprised me, was the fact that most of the sentences that came up for my key word search search were of events that took place before 1989. I was expecting more sentences that related to how East and West Germans felt about the destruction of the wall and the end of the Cold War,  instead of non-descriptive information about events leading up to the destruction of the wall. The reason for this shallow is analysis was because the events were too recent and raw to allow any in depth analysis. If I had chosen newspaper articles later date, several months later, I would have yielded richer and more analytical information. Just like the dropping of the first atomic bomb, the destruction of the Berlin Wall was such a momentous event that people needed time to digest and understand the implications of what had just happened.