StandFor.co.nz published a word cloud of the 26,019 comments left by the public. Their word cloud (on the left) was manually filtered to remove some terms. We recreated an alternative word cloud (right) from the 20 most frequently repeating answers.

Neither word cloud provides context for the range of ideas expressed. As an alternative, the science of Natural Language Processing provides algorithms to groups themes and subthemes. This interactive was built using a tool called Thematic, to display conceptual groups within the responses.

Clicking / tapping on a theme displays the associated subthemes:

Note: Comments can often fit more than one theme and subtheme, and sentiment within a theme can be either positive or negative. For example the theme 'changing the flag' includes comments both for and against change.