During the 2010 UK general election, the first ever televised Prime Ministerial debates took place. Research and pilot work in KMi and at University of Leeds demonstrated the interest that this sparked in the public, their need for more understanding of the issues, and the potential of mapping the debates in visual ways. In 2015 the next election is anticipated with public debates. The 3 year EPSRC-funded Election Debate Visualisation (EDV) Project [http://edv-project.net] will take this opportunity to investigate new ways in which the public can replay the debates, and engage more deeply with the issue and arguments at stake. In this talk, we will reflect on the current experience of watching debates, summarise key findings from citizen focus groups, show how we have prototyped a new kind of richer audience feedback and video annotation interface (using the televised/streamed Clegg-Farage EU Debates as an example), and indicate where we’re going. Your thoughts on this are most welcome.

1. Election Debate Visualisation Project
edv-project.net
Simon Buckingham Shum
Anna De Liddo
Brian Plüss

2. Simon Buckingham Shum
Professor
Learning Informatics
Anna De Liddo
Research Associate
Collective Intelligence
Brian Plüss
Research Associate
Debate Analytics
Paul Wilson
Lecturer
Design
Giles Moss
Lecturer
Media Policy
Stephen Coleman
Professor
Political Communication

3. The 2010 Election Debates

5. Twitter sentiment analysis

6. Google searches sparked by the debates

7. 2010 BBC replay site
• Second debate
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/
election_2010/8635098.stm
• Final debate:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/
election_2010/8652884.stm

8. Leeds & OU research
on the 2010 Election Debates

9. Univ. Leeds prior research into
public response to the
televised 2010 Election
Debates

10. Impact of the 3 debates on
voter intentions

11. Key findings…
• the British public appreciated the debates
• 2/3 said they’d learnt something new
• they seemed to energise first-time voters
• people would talk about them afterwards
(esp. younger voters)
• media coverage shifted from focusing on
the ‘game’ to the substance

12. Mapping the UK election TV debates
http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/2010/04/real-time-mapping-election-tv-debates

13. Mapping the UK election TV debates
http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/2010/04/real-time-mapping-election-tv-debates
Seeing Nick Clegg’s moves

14. Mapping the UK election TV debates
http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/2010/04/
debate-replay-with-map

15. The EDV Project
2013-2016

16. Overall project objectives
• Political Research: Understand the roles
that Election Debates could play in
developing citizens able to engage more
fully in the democratic process
thus motivating…
• Computation/Informatics Research:
Render and enrich replays of the
debates through novel experiences that
make visible significant features of the
content, and of the context
enabling further research and design through…
• Open Data: Publish open datasets for
others to analyse and visualise

17. Qualitative research: citizens’
perceptions of election
debates
12 focus groups conducted at Leeds:
• Disengaged Voters
• Committed Party Supporters
• Undecided Voters
• First-time Voters
• Active Users of the Internet
• Performers
Male/Female; 15 people per group

18. Qualitative research: citizens’
perceptions of election
debates
Structure of the interviews:
1. The 2010 UK General Elections
Debates: views and experiences
2. Improving the debates
3. Final questions

19. Qualitative research: citizens’
perceptions of election
debates
Structure of the interviews:

20. Qualitative research: citizens’
perceptions of election debates
Structure of the interviews:

21. Qualitative research: citizens’
perceptions of election debates
Structure of the interviews:

22. Focus groups motivate a set
of ‘democratic entitlements’
• Ability to scrutinise the communicational
strategies adopted by the speakers, e.g. to
detect intentional confusion & manipulation
• Understand the meaning, background and
historical record of political claims
• Connect disparate arguments and claims
with a view to understanding their
ramifications, esp. negative
• Have a sense of involvement, presence
and voice, including telling their stories

23. The debate-viewing
experience today

24. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU relations
BBC, 2 AprilLBC Radio, 26 March

25. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU
relations

26. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU
relations

27. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU
relations

28. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU
relations

29. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU
relations

30. The Clegg-Farage 2014 debates on UK-EU
relations

31. Fact-checking
• https://fullfact.org/
• Knowledge base
• Live fact-checking
• …
Full Fact (@FullFact)
Independent fact checking organisation

32. BBC Live site

33. BBC Replay site

34. The Future of
Election Debate Replays

35. Computing & Informatics research objectives
• Debate Analytics and Visualizations
• Citizen Voice Channels
• Debate Replay Platform
• (Open Data Archive)

36. Envisioning the future with
concept demonstrators
• Automatic, semi-automatic and
manual analysis of debate clips
and transcripts
• Demonstrate concepts in future
user experience, and deeper
analytics
Use these to envision broadcasters and
other researchers as to what should be
possible for the 2020 General Election…

37. Debate Analytics and
Visualisations
• Argument Maps
• Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
Collaborations might make possible:
• Social Media Analytics
• Fact-Checking
• Topic Analysis

38. Argument Maps
• First 15 minutes of second Clegg-Farage debate
• Claims being made and by whom
• Support/challenge connections
• Time of contributions is less influential
• Is this the best way to show it to end-users?

39. Argument Maps

40. Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
(Non-Cooperation in Dialogue)

41. Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
(Non-Cooperation in Dialogue)
• Rules of the game in terms of discourse
obligations
• Coding scheme for manual annotation of
transcripts
• Method for classifying annotated speaker
contributions wrt the rules of the game

42. Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
(Non-Cooperation in Dialogue)
Dialogue Act
Initiating Responsive
Init-Inform Init-InfoReq Resp-Inform Resp-Accept Resp-Reject
Objective Subjective
On-Topic Off-Topic
Accurate Inaccurate
New Repeated
Neutral Loaded
On-Topic Off-Topic
Reasonable Unreasonable
New Repeated
Objective Subjective
Relevant Irrelevant
Accurate Inaccurate
New Repeated
Complete Incomplete
• Rules of the game in terms of discourse
obligations
• Coding scheme for manual annotation of
transcripts
• Method for classifying annotated speaker
contributions wrt the rules of the game

43. Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
(Non-Cooperation in Dialogue)
Dialogue
Transcript
Annotation
(Segments, Dialogue Act Functions,
References and Content Features)
Assessment of
Cooperation
(for each participant in the dialogue)
Degrees of
Cooperation
Annotated
Dialogue
• Rules of the game in terms of discourse
obligations
• Coding scheme for manual annotation of
transcripts
• Method for classifying annotated speaker
contributions wrt the rules of the game
Dialogue Act
Initiating Responsive
Init-Inform Init-InfoReq Resp-Inform Resp-Accept Resp-Reject
Objective Subjective
On-Topic Off-Topic
Accurate Inaccurate
New Repeated
Neutral Loaded
On-Topic Off-Topic
Reasonable Unreasonable
New Repeated
Objective Subjective
Relevant Irrelevant
Accurate Inaccurate
New Repeated
Complete Incomplete

44. Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
(Non-Cooperation in Dialogue)
Annotation Tool

45. Rhetoric and Rules of the Game
(Non-Cooperation in Dialogue)
Output of the
method

46. Social Media Analytics

47. Citizen Voice Channels
• Viewer Feedback
Collaborations might make possible:
• Life Stories
• Crowdsourced Fact-Checking
• Localised Narratives

48. What if viewers had a say?

49. What if viewers had a say?
‘Soft’ Feedback

50. What if viewers had a say?
• Controlled and nuanced
• Voluntary and non-intrusive
• Enabling analytics and
visualisations
‘Soft’ Feedback:

51. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
• 18 flashcards in 3 categories
• Emotion
• Trust
• Information need
• 15 participants watched the
second Clegg-Farage debate live
• Video annotations in Compendium
(and Youtube!)

52. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
Emotion cards

53. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
Trust cards

54. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
Information need cards

55. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
• 18 flashcards in 3 categories
• Emotion
• Trust
• Information need
• 15 participants watched the
second Clegg-Farage debate live
• Video annotations in Compendium
(and Youtube!)

56. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment

57. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
• 18 flashcards in 3 categories
• Emotion
• Trust
• Information need
• 15 participants watched the
second Clegg-Farage debate live
• Video annotations in Compendium
(and Youtube!)

58. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
Compendium Annotations
• Video mapping with modifications
• Annotations exported as XML,
CSV, etc. for analysis
• Youtube export for dissemination
• Replay of annotated videos

59. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
Compendium Annotations
• Video mapping with modifications
• Annotations exported as XML,
CSV, etc. for analysis
• YouTube export for dissemination
• Replay of annotated videos

60. A paper prototype: the flashcard experiment
Quantitative analysis:
• Most/least frequently used cards
• Most/least frequently used categories
• Comparison with other viewer
response analytics
Outcomes:
• Redesign of flashcard deck
• Test of hypothesis on categories
• Insight for the design of feedback
interfaces

61. Debate Replay Platform
• Uniformly organise diverse sources
of information
• Support user preferences in terms
of:
• Visualisation channels
• Media navigation and indexing
• Allow for different kinds of audience
response

62. EDV
Replay
Platform

63. EDV
Replay
Platform

64. Generation of:
- Web content
- Analytics
- Open data
- ...
Repository
Replay Website
GO!
Argument Mapping
Open
Data
Video Transcripts
Twitter
Feeds
Soft
Feedback
System
Rhetoric and
Rules Checking
Debate
Rules
TopicsNon-Cooperation
Arguments Fact checking
Open Data
Sentiment
Analysis
Party
Manifestos
Topic Analysis
Soft Feedback
Analysis
Fact-Checking
Soft Feedback
EDV Architecture Sketch
• Gather data from sources
• Analyse data and produce visualisations
• Tailor augmentations to audiences and purposes
• Publish open data and replay interface
• Provide access to citizens and give them a ‘voice’
Features and functionalities:

65. Collective
Intelligence
Online
Deliberation
Human Dynamics of Engagements
Analytics, &
Visualization
Crowdsourcing
ideas, arguments
and facts
Structured Discourse and
Argumentation
Democratic
entitlements
New class of Online
Deliberation tools
Contested Collective Intelligence for the Common Good
(Social, Visual and Argumentation-based CI)
Citizen Voice
Social
Innovation
Computational
Services &
Dialogic Agents

66. Future Research Collaborations
• Combining sentiment, topic and opinion
mining of social media data to political
debate analysis and visualization
• Automated sentiment and topic and
analysis of election debate transcripts
will be used to generate engaging
visualizations and summarization of the
debate content

67. Topic: Immigration

68. Future Research Collaborations
• Enabling soft feedback during the live
broadcasting of the political debate
• Soft feedback widget for Stadium Live
• This would provide a platform for
experimentation of different research
hypothesis (f.i. how do soft feedback
statistic affect opinion changes and
debate participation?)
• It would also provide a platform to
engage a larger audience.

70. Future Research Collaborations
• Collective Intelligence and Visual
Analytics Dashboard for online
discourse and argumentation data
(IBIS datamodel)

73. Thanks for you time!
Simon Buckingham Shum, Anna De Liddo and Brian Plüss
Project website: http://edv-project.net/