Tracking the dynamic evolution of participant salience in a discussion

Ahmed Hassan, Anthony Fader, Michael H. Crespin, Kevin M. Quinn, Burt L. Monroe, Michael Colaresi, Dragomir R. Radev

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

We introduce a technique for analyzing the temporal evolution of the salience of participants in a discussion. Our method can dynamically track how the relative importance of speakers evolve over time using graph based techniques. Speaker salience is computed based on the eigenvector cen-trality in a graph representation of participants in a discussion. Two participants in a discussion are linked with an edge if they use similar rhetoric. The method is dynamic in the sense that the graph evolves over time to capture the evolution inherent to the participants salience. We used our method to track the salience of members of the US Senate using data from the US Congressional Record. Our analysis investigated how the salience of speakers changes over time. Our results show that the scores can capture speaker centrality in topics as well as events that result in change of salience or influence among different participants.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationColing 2008 - 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference
PublisherAssociation for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Pages313-320
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9781905593446
DOIs
StatePublished - 2008
Event22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Coling 2008 - Manchester, United Kingdom
Duration: Aug 18 2008Aug 22 2008

Publication series

NameColing 2008 - 22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference
Volume1

Other

Other22nd International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Coling 2008
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityManchester
Period8/18/088/22/08

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Linguistics and Language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Tracking the dynamic evolution of participant salience in a discussion'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this