epsian / stride_pa

Pilot project looking at the USA PATRIOT ACT in the news over time

The purpose of this project is to better understand the public discourse surrounding legislation in democracies. Given the democratic system, open debate and argument are assumed to be a vital step in creating legislation. However, it is a step that is becoming more truncated. A key example was the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. This piece of legislation influenced several aspects of federal policy, and massively changed how government surveillance operates in the United States, yet the 131 page piece of legislation was introduced and passed into law in only 4 days.

The PATRIOT Act affected several areas of United States law. Its main titles included:

1. Title I: Enhancing domestic security against terrorism

2. Title II: Surveillance procedures

3. Title III: Anti-money-laundering to prevent terrorism

4. Title IV: Border security

5. Title V: Removing obstacles to investigating terrorism

6. Title VI: Victims and families of victims of terrorism

7. Title VII: Increased information sharing for critical infrastructure protection

8. Title VIII: Terrorism criminal law

9. Title IX: Improved intelligence

10. Title X: Miscellaneous

My hypothesis was that due to rapid passage of the PATRIOT Act, discourse surrounding the act will not have begun focusing on key issues (such as FISA Courts) until after the legislation had passed. A null finding would consist of no significant emergence of topics over time, or with all discussion about the PATRIOT Act happening before, or soon after its passage.

I collected newspaper texts from Access World News and constructed a timeline of when key topics from the USA PATRIOT Act emerged in the public discourse. Topic models were then generated for each major emergence of the PATRIOT Act in public discourse. For more information about this process, see the data managment plan under the data directory.