Information Visualization in Political Discussions

Abstract

A "political discussion" is characterized by the occurrence of conflicting interests concerning the decision to be made. Participants in these discussions need to take a position in the discussion, to strengthen a specific opinion and to influence other participants in order to support their own view for a decision. Decision makers, on their turn, need to identify what is popular, consensual or controversial. To achieve these objectives, it is desired to quickly identify a set of relevant information that helps to follow political discussions. In this research, methods were developed to extract information considered relevant for this objective: who are the most influent participants, which are the allies and objector groups, and which messages or issues are most popular, consensual and controversial. Visualizations were also developed to help the user to identify this information.