scholarly journals Measuring Political Positions from Legislative Speech

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin E. Lauderdale ◽  
Alexander Herzog

Existing approaches to measuring political disagreement from text data perform poorly except when applied to narrowly selected texts discussing the same issues and written in the same style. We demonstrate the first viable approach for estimating legislator-specific scores from the entire speech corpus of a legislature, while also producing extensive information about the evolution of speech polarization and politically loaded language. In the Irish Dáil, we show that the dominant dimension of speech variation is government–opposition, with ministers more extreme on this dimension than backbenchers, and a second dimension distinguishing between the establishment and anti-establishment opposition parties. In the U. S. Senate, we estimate a dimension that has moderate within-party correlations with scales based on roll-call votes and campaign donation patterns; however, we observe greater overlap across parties in speech positions than roll-call positions and partisan polarization in speeches varies more clearly in response to major political events.

Author(s):  
Lesia Kotsiuk ◽  
Yurii Kotsiuk

The article attempts to analyze the typological characteristics of text corpora. The author proposes to classify corpora with consideration of different aspects of this modern linguistic notion, namely the design and structural features of the corpus (balanced / representative corpus, opportunistic corpus, complete corpus, full-text corpus, fragmentary corpus, parallel corpus and comparable corpus, static / sample corpus, dynamic / monitor corpus), the method of fixing and indexing text data in the corpus (printed corpus, electronic text corpus, transcribed speech corpus, audio/video corpus, multimodal corpus, plain corpus, annotated corpus), as well as the way of how the corpus can be used. According to the aim of the corpus use one can distinguish between a linguistic and illustrative corpus. Due to the access possibilities, there can be identified an open-access corpus, closed-access corpus and the commercial one. Examples of these types of text corpora are also presented. The article presents terminological equivalents of corpus names by the type of text data in Ukrainian and English.


2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 258-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH N. SIMAS ◽  
SCOTT CLIFFORD ◽  
JUSTIN H. KIRKLAND

Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in partisan social polarization, leaving scholars in search of solutions to partisan conflict. The psychology of intergroup relations identifies empathy as one of the key mechanisms that reduces intergroup conflict, and some have suggested that a lack of empathy has contributed to partisan polarization. Yet, empathy may not always live up to this promise. We argue that, in practice, the experience of empathy is biased toward one’s ingroup and can actually exacerbate political polarization. First, using a large, national sample, we demonstrate that higher levels of dispositional empathic concern are associated with higher levels of affective polarization. Second, using an experimental design, we show that individuals high in empathic concern show greater partisan bias in evaluating contentious political events. Taken together, our results suggest that, contrary to popular views, higher levels of dispositional empathy actually facilitate partisan polarization.


Entropy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 734
Author(s):  
Insu Choi ◽  
Woo Chang Kim

Politically-themed stocks mainly refer to stocks that benefit from the policies of politicians. This study gave the empirical analysis of the politically-themed stocks in the Republic of Korea and constructed politically-themed stock networks based on the Republic of Korea’s politically-themed stocks, derived mainly from politicians. To select politically-themed stocks, we calculated the daily politician sentiment index (PSI), which means politicians’ daily reputation using politicians’ search volume data and sentiment analysis results from politician-related text data. Additionally, we selected politically-themed stock candidates from politician-related search volume data. To measure causal relationships, we adopted entropy-based measures. We determined politically-themed stocks based on causal relationships from the rates of change of the PSI to their abnormal returns. To illustrate causal relationships between politically-themed stocks, we constructed politically-themed stock networks based on causal relationships using entropy-based approaches. Moreover, we experimented using politically-themed stocks in real-world situations from the schematized networks, focusing on politically-themed stock networks’ dynamic changes. We verified that the investment strategy using the PSI and politically-themed stocks that we selected could benchmark the main stock market indices such as the KOSPI and KOSDAQ around political events.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Hugdahl ◽  
René Westerhausen

The present paper is based on a talk on hemispheric asymmetry given by Kenneth Hugdahl at the Xth European Congress of Psychology, Praha July 2007. Here, we propose that hemispheric asymmetry evolved because of a left hemisphere speech processing specialization. The evolution of speech and the need for air-based communication necessitated division of labor between the hemispheres in order to avoid having duplicate copies in both hemispheres that would increase processing redundancy. It is argued that the neuronal basis of this labor division is the structural asymmetry observed in the peri-Sylvian region in the posterior part of the temporal lobe, with a left larger than right planum temporale area. This is the only example where a structural, or anatomical, asymmetry matches a corresponding functional asymmetry. The increase in gray matter volume in the left planum temporale area corresponds to a functional asymmetry of speech processing, as indexed from both behavioral, dichotic listening, and functional neuroimaging studies. The functional anatomy of the corpus callosum also supports such a view, with regional specificity of information transfer between the hemispheres.


1986 ◽  
Vol 25 (04) ◽  
pp. 222-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Quaak ◽  
R. F. Westerman ◽  
J. A. Schouten ◽  
A. Hasman ◽  
J. H. Bemmel

SummaryComputerized medical history taking, in which patients answer questions by using a terminal, is compared with the written medical record for a group of 99 patients in internal medicine. Patient complaints were analysed with respect to their frequency of occurrence for all important tracts, such as the respiratory, the gastro-intestinal and the uro-genital tracts. About 36% of over 3,200 patient answers were identical in the patient record and the written record, but a considerable percentage of complaints (56%), that were present in the patient record, were missing in the written record; the reverse was true for 4.5%. A computerized patient record appears to contain more extensive information about patient complaints, still to be interpreted by the experienced physician.


1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 21-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen A. Scudiero ◽  
Ruth L. Wong

A free text data collection system has been developed at the University of Illinois utilizing single word, syntax free dictionary lookup to process data for retrieval. The source document for the system is the Surgical Pathology Request and Report form. To date 12,653 documents have been entered into the system.The free text data was used to create an IRS (Information Retrieval System) database. A program to interrogate this database has been developed to numerically coded operative procedures. A total of 16,519 procedures records were generated. One and nine tenths percent of the procedures could not be fitted into any procedures category; 6.1% could not be specifically coded, while 92% were coded into specific categories. A system of PL/1 programs has been developed to facilitate manual editing of these records, which can be performed in a reasonable length of time (1 week). This manual check reveals that these 92% were coded with precision = 0.931 and recall = 0.924. Correction of the readily correctable errors could improve these figures to precision = 0.977 and recall = 0.987. Syntax errors were relatively unimportant in the overall coding process, but did introduce significant error in some categories, such as when right-left-bilateral distinction was attempted.The coded file that has been constructed will be used as an input file to a gynecological disease/PAP smear correlation system. The outputs of this system will include retrospective information on the natural history of selected diseases and a patient log providing information to the clinician on patient follow-up.Thus a free text data collection system can be utilized to produce numerically coded files of reasonable accuracy. Further, these files can be used as a source of useful information both for the clinician and for the medical researcher.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (188) ◽  
pp. 487-494
Author(s):  
Daniel Mullis

In recent years, political and social conditions have changed dramatically. Many analyses help to capture these dynamics. However, they produce political pessimism: on the one hand there is the image of regression and on the other, a direct link is made between socio-economic decline and the rise of the far-right. To counter these aspects, this article argues that current political events are to be understood less as ‘regression’ but rather as a moment of movement and the return of deep political struggles. Referring to Jacques Ranciere’s political thought, the current conditions can be captured as the ‘end of post-democracy’. This approach changes the perspective on current social dynamics in a productive way. It allows for an emphasis on movement and the recognition of the windows of opportunity for emancipatory struggles.


Author(s):  
I. G. Zakharova ◽  
Yu. V. Boganyuk ◽  
M. S. Vorobyova ◽  
E. A. Pavlova

The article goal is to demonstrate the possibilities of the approach to diagnosing the level of IT graduates’ professional competence, based on the analysis of the student’s digital footprint and the content of the corresponding educational program. We describe methods for extracting student professional level indicators from digital footprint text data — courses’ descriptions and graduation qualification works. We show methods of comparing these indicators with the formalized requirements of employers, reflected in the texts of vacancies in the field of information technology. The proposed approach was applied at the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Tyumen. We performed diagnostics using a data set that included texts of courses’ descriptions for IT areas of undergraduate studies, 542 graduation qualification works in these areas, 879 descriptions of job requirements and information on graduate employment. The presented approach allows us to evaluate the relevance of the educational program as a whole and the level of professional competence of each student based on objective data. The results were used to update the content of some major courses and to include new elective courses in the curriculum.


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