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Big Data Attempts To Find Meaning In 40 Years of UK Political Debate (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: International researchers have analyzed 40 years of political speeches from the UK Parliament in an effort to move the study of political theory from social science towards the quantitative analysis offered by Big Data analytics techniques. The group used Python to crunch publicly available data from theyworkforyou.com, comprising 3.7 million individual speeches. A few strange trends emerged in this initial experiment, such as the decline of 'health care' as a trending Parliamentary topic, with 'welfare' consistently on the rise, and the decrease of fervent interest in any particular topic during the more pacific years under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
"The decrease of fervent interest in any particular topic during the more pacific years under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair."
WHAT??
Brit here. I recall a few comments on the Miner's Strike, under Mrs. T. Something about the Iraq war under Tony Blair, as well.
Or does this just show how out-of-touch the 40 years of political speeches were with what people were actually concerned about?
Attempts to find Meaning in 40 Years of UK Political Debate. Good luck with that. The answer isn't even 42, it's probably 'Punch and Judy'.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Oh, there is plenty of political theory and ideology to go around. The problem with this study is that what is said is usually nothing to do with the actual motives.
The current chancellor is a good example. Bangs on about opportunity for all, fairness, all in it together, party of the working class etc. Yet his policies are mostly designed to benefit rich people and big business. His real ideology is pretty much the opposite of what he says, so any study of his speeches is not going to produce any meaningful results.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Heh. The first thing I thought of when I read the headline was a snippet from Asimov's "Foundation":
When Holk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications – in short, all the goo and dribble – he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out."
"Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn't say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire."