Completion Date: 30 March 2021
Medium: Paint & ink on acid-free mount-board
Dimensions: 30 x 40 inches
The most commonly used 100 words by CNN, FOX, NYT and the BBC websites on 30 March 2021.
My process was as follows: I went on to each news outlet’s homepage, selected all the text, then copy-pasted it into a spreadsheet. This process yielded 6,856 words. I then ran a line of code that reduced the list to 2,590 unique words, but that also showed how many times each word was repeated. I then ranked them by repeat frequency. To get to my top 100, I did editorialise by removing things like definite articles, pronouns, numbers and few obvious website terms. The aim was to end up with a list words that I believe accurately snapshots the news, as served to us online, on this day.