In the first post of this two-part linguistic investigation, we set up an unsupervised analytical approach; factor analysis to identify latent dimensions of linguistic variation in the ‘What’s Happened’ reviews then feeding these dimensions into a cluster analysis in order to identify a small number of distinct text types. We know that the reviewing patterns for ‘What Happened’ displayed ‘burstiness’ i.e. a high frequency of reviews within a short period of time (see Figure 1 below).  As Figure 2 below hypothesises, if there is a text type cluster that displays similar ‘burstiness’, we can infer that there there was probably some level of coordination of reviewing behaviour and identify linguistic features associated with less-than-authentic reviews.

Figure 1: Quantity, frequency and rating of ‘What Happened’ book reviews in the first month after launch.

Figure 2: Hypothesis for fake review detection using cluster analysis with time series. 

The factor analysis found four dimensions of language variation in the ‘What Happened’ reviews: Engagement; Reflection; Emotiveness; Commentary.

Dimenson 1: Engagement

One linguistic dimension of these reviews describes levels of Engagement. In engaging reviews, writers directly address (using ‘you’ pronouns) either the reader or Hillary Clinton. The style is conversational and persuasive with exclamations, questions and hypotheticals used to interact with the reader.

THANK YOU for telling your story Secretary Clinton! You have accomplished so much and are a genuine inspiration. If they weren’t so afraid of you, they wouldn’t work so hard to shut you up. Keep fighting and I will too!

It’s her side of the story. That’s what it claims to be, and that’s what it is. For those who don’t like it because you disagree with her, you’re missing the point. After reading it, did you get a better feel for who the candidate was, what she was thinking, and even what her biases were and are? If so, then the book does what it claims to do.

Non-engaging reviews are more  linguistically dense, using longer words and giving complex descriptions of the content.

The second chapter describes the days after the election, when she first isolated herself from the deluge of texts and emails from well-wishers. Eventually, however, she threw herself back into the fray, writing letters of thanks to supporters, attending galas, and spending time with her family.

Dimension 2: Reflection

A second linguistic dimension sees reviewers reflect on their personal experience of reading the book. This may include autobiographical elements, narratives related to the book purchase and reading occasions as well as feelings had while reading. The key linguistic features here are ‘I’-pronoun and past tense:

Like many other people, I wondered if this book would really be worth reading. I voted for Clinton but I wondered how much value there could be in her account of the 2016 Presidential election campaign. Luckily, this book is so much more. It hit my Kindle on Tuesday and as it happens I had three airplane flights (including two very long ones) on Wednesday and Thursday, so I made it my project for those flights. I didn’t have to force myself to keep going; once I started, her narrative and the force of her ideas and anecdotes kept me reading.

Dimension 3: Emotiveness

Reviews with a high Emotiveness score were extremely positive in their praise of the book and, especially, Hillary Clinton. This was signalled by use of long strings of positive adjectives that might reasonably be considered excessive:

A funny, dark, and honest book by one of the truest public servants of her generation. Her writing on her marriage was deeply heartfelt and true. The sad little haters will never keep this woman down, and history will remember her as a trailblazer and a figure of remarkable courage.

The People’s President, Hillary delivers her heartfelt, ugly cry inducing account about What Happened when she lost the Electoral College to the worst presidential candidate in modern history. Politics aside, America lost when they elevated Russia’s Agent Orange to the presidency. Think what you will, but America missed the chance to have a level headed, intelligent and resilient leader, and yes the first female president.

Hillary’s a smart, insightful, resilient, inspiring, kind, caring, pragmatic human being. This book is a journey through her heart and soul.

Dimension 4: Commentary

Reviews with high Commentary focused on Hillary Clinton and the other actors in the election story (high use of third person pronouns). The reviews analyse and evaluate Clinton’s perspective and explanation of what happened in 2016, in a conversational manner much like a TV commentator or pundit.

I disagree with the reviewers who says Hillary doesn’t take responsibility for her mistakes. She analyzes all the reasons she thinks she lost the election–yes, she talks about Russian interference, malpractice by the FBI, and false equivalence by the mainstream press IN ADDITION TO missteps she thinks she made. My own take is that she doesn’t pay enough attention to the reasons why Bernie Sanders was able to command so strong a following with so few resources; but that is part and parcel of who she is.

Historical memoir from the first female candidate for a major political party…a unique perspective and platform to write from. She does recount her successes as well as her failures…she was mostly shut down during the campaigns by repetitious questions and by over-coverage of Trump by the media. She is intelligent and well-informed and states her case without self-pity.

Having the identified these four linguistic functions in the ‘What Happened’ reviews, the trick is to see how they combined to form clusters of review text types – and whether any one of these clusters is more strongly correlated with the high frequency and early reviews.

As Figure 4 shows, hierarchical cluster analysis identifed four review text types: ‘Tribute’ reviews, the largest cluster, have high Emotiveness; ‘Pundit’ reviews have high levels of Commentary and Engagement; ‘Content descriptive’ or ‘spoiler’ reviews talk about what’s in the book in an objective manner i.e. without Reflection or Engagement; ‘Experiential’ reviews narrate the writer’s personal Reflection on the experience of reading the book.

Figure 4: 4-Cluster solution with mean factor loadings, interpretations and percentage of total reviews.   

So, we have these four review text types…do any of these correlate with the bursty reviewing patterns identified? Figure 5 below shows that the actual linguistic pattern of ‘What Happened’ reviews appears to correlate with the burstiness pattern; a large proportion of the first day reviews are Tribute reviews and most of this review type occurs within the first week before tailing off during the rest of the month. The fact that no other review type is particularly time sensitive suggests that, at the very least, Tribute reviews are correlated with early reviewing and are potentially evidence of  coordinated recruitment of Hillary Clinton’s ‘fans’ as book reviewers.

Figure 5: Distribution of ‘What Happened’ review text types during first month following book launch, compared to hypothetical deceptive and non-deceptive distributions. 

If Hillary Clinton’s PR team did solicit positive reviews in the early days of the book launch, perhaps it is not surprising; they would have been responding to an extensive negative campaign against her book which included manipulating review helpfulness metrics (i.e. massive upvoting of low-rated reviews) as well writing fake negative reviews.

From an investigative linguistic perspective, this analysis shows that: a) suspicious activity can be detected using linguistic data as well as network or platform metadata; b) unqualified praise and intense positive emotions are deception indicators in the online review genre; and c) cluster analysis is an effective way of recognising linguistic deception features in an unsupervised learning setting.