A political analyst says word clouds produced by the ABC reflect a "dangerous" sense of disillusion within the community for Australian democracy and leadership.

ABC News Online asked readers to submit three words to describe their views on the performance of Julia Gillard's minority Government and Tony Abbott's Opposition over the past year.

Responses were drawn from the ABC website and via the Twitter hashtags #gillardin3 and #abbottin3.

Of the 100 most submitted words used to describe Ms Gillard's performance, only 18 were positive. Mr Abbott's word cloud also featured mainly negative descriptions, with 26 positive words making the top 100.

"Most words are negative rather than positive because there's a great deal of negativity and cynicism in the air towards leadership in Australia at the moment," said Dr Troy Whitford, Charles Sturt University politics and history lecturer.

"We're seeing harsh and angry words. It's interesting to think what are people actually reading or analysing to come to those particular words or conclusion."

Dr Whitford believes Australians, while generally taking a negative view towards politicians, are more cynical towards leaders today.

"There's a growing sense of disillusionment in our political system that's catching on. In some respects, it can be quite a long-term and dangerous problem," he told ABC News Online.

"If people don't feel they have strong leadership and a vibrant government, then they start to wonder what's the point of having institutions like these if they're not inspiring or leading as we'd expect them to.

"My greatest concern is the negativity is just going to get worse - even in some countries in Asia, they're even questioning if democracy is the way we should be going.

"If we keep along this path of cutting down what we know about politics and becoming more superficial, then we will eventually become more disillusioned and eventually not have much interest in democracy at all."

Dr Whitford, who is director of the non-for-profit Page Research Centre which is associated with the Nationals and funded by the Department of Finance and Deregulation, blames "personality politics" for the downward spiral.

He says a hung parliament is a complicated time for any government, and the public is not getting a full grasp of what is going on.

"Through media and media cycles, and this generation of gossip, we see politicians as pop stars or identities, so we tend to be more super critical about how they behave, what they wear and so forth," he said.

"In comparison to previous times, most of our leaders - Menzies, Chifley, McEwen - were held in greater regard because they were either seen as being more statesman-like or more pragmatic with policy.

"We never really knew much about their personal lives, nor did we really care about what they wore.

"Now columnists describe Julia Gillard's clothes - we shouldn't really be interested in what she wears, yet that dominates. We're more concerned about what Tony Abbott wears when he goes swimming than policy issues.

"It's become very superficial. We're not really seeing what's going on behind the scenes with politicians - we're just getting these short, sharp bites and people are formulating opinions that across the board are a ill-formed because they don't go deep enough into the issues."

Dr Ian Cook, senior lecturer in politics and international studies at Murdoch University, agrees that superficiality is turning people away from politicians.

"Australian politics in general, but particularly in the last couple of decades, has really taken up the spin process so all the major political parties' messages are heavily massaged and constructed," he said.

"So people are getting a much clearer sense that there's a lot of superficiality about the politics being delivered to them and they're responding to that superficiality by being negative towards them.

"There's a basic lack of honesty, lack of capacity to tell it how it is, everything's driven by the 24-hour news cycle and the need to maintain brands - voters are responding to that."

Alienation

Dr Cook says while negativity is not unusual in the context of Australian politics, it is unique that it is being directed at both sides.

"It is is manifesting a general alienation from the political processes at the moment," he said.

"It's quite a negative environment, partly a confusing environment for a lot of people.

"We're dealing with some big issues - climate change, economic reforms, health reform - and in some ways people are feeling a little bit lost and they're not really getting as much leadership as they're hoping for from their politicians, particularly the leaders of the major political parties.

"In a difficult and confusing time, they're not getting much by way of reassurance, or even clarity, with respect to the issues and the options available to them."

Dr Cook says he understands how people have come to conclusions they have.

"With respect to the Labor Party, which is generally a party of reform, people have expectations about it, so the 'disappointing' that's coming through with respect to Gillard reflects people's expectations on what they thought she and the Labor Party could deliver," he said.

"With respect to Tony Abbott, when he came in, he said he sees the role of Opposition as being to oppose, in a sense quite overtly stating a relatively negative approach. So he sees his job as criticising, trying to tear down, and that perception and conception is being quite strongly in these word clouds."