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.

Comments

the more pacific years ??

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Re: the more pacific years ??

[RogueyWon]

I think it means "years of relative economic stability".

Don't forget that perceptions of economic (in)stability tend to affect political discourse more than any other factor. The 1984 Miner's Strike and the Iraq War excite a lot of emotion in some quarters, but don't forget that Thatcher and Blair respectively went on to win elections after both of them.

The declines of the 1979-1997 Conservative Government and the 1997-2010 Labour Governments almost certainly had more to do with a combination of general fatigue and factors that threatened economic stability (Black Monday and Europe for the former, the 2007 financial crash for the latter).

On this basis, the speeches were actually well tuned to what the majority seem to have been concerned about.

Wow... type-fu

[rmdingler]

... decrease of fervent interest in any particular topic during the more pacific years under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

I am trying to envision the turn of events that rendered during periods of political stability into this typo for the ages.

Re:Wow... type-fu

[rmdingler]

Well looky there... I have dumbass all over my face.

Political theory?!

[BitZtream]

Theres your problem.

There is nothing scientific about politics.

Politics are 100% emotion, just like the stock market and the economy.

These things could be based on sound deterministic things, but they will never be because they all depend on human interaction. You simply can not predict human behavior. Ever. You can make plenty of reasonable accurate generalizations, but there will always be enough people in that generalization who break it horribly and destroy any plans you made based on that generalization.

Re:Political theory?!

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Prime example

[Chrisq]

Prime example of GIGO

Hrmppfff...

[Feral Nerd]

Big Data Attempts To Find Meaning In 40 Years of UK Political Debate

Good luck with that....

In the land of ironic framing, signal from noise?

[RyanFenton]

Have you ever watched parliament? For as long as I've ever seen it (occasionally through the years on streams), the ratio of deeply ironic statements to sincere ones would make it almost impossible to interpret systematically. Even judging the number of 'harumphs' after a statement, or forced group laughs wouldn't give you a clear clue in that audience.

It's like trying to judge violence in a group of young apes who do nothing but posture all day, only accidentally actually hitting eachother. It's all a strange mix of false outrage, forced laughter, crude imitation, lies, and accusation of lies. Things get done in a way, but not without a mountain of pagentry and indirection.

If you want signal from noise in that scenario, you're better off looking at finances, rather than speeches.

Ryan Fenton

Oxymoronic headline

[hughbar]

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'.

As said in Yes, Prime Minister

[sandbagger]

James Hacker: [reading a speech written for him] "We shall of course be reviewing a ... Bernard, this doesn't say anything.

Bernard Woolley: Oh, thank you , Prime Minister.

Re:As said in Yes, Prime Minister

[tsqr]

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."

Re:As said in Yes, Prime Minister

[adhdengineer]

Yes Minister/Prime Minister should be compulsory viewing in schools so people understand the political processes of this great country!

The braying of donkeys

[albacrankie]

The UK's youngest member of parliament had this to say after here first few weeks in the job:

"So you’re not allowed to clap like an ordinary person, but you’re allowed to bray like a donkey? I mean, see PMQs, especially the Conservative side, they’ve got this weird noise they do. It actually sounds like a drunken mob."

Re:The truly bizarre thing about UK politics

[Anne Thwacks]

Nonsense.

You seem not to realise that politics is an end-to-end demonstration of the fact that the unintended consequences will always exceed the intended ones.

The left are committed to a "fight for the right to be exploited", while the right are mainly struggling not to look like Marie Antoinette.

Pulling data from political speeches?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Wouldn't performing a spectrographic analysis on the hot air coming out of these guys' mouthes reveal more quantifiable data?

Re:Trends

[tlhIngan]

For example, nowadays social media has made conventional wars between major world powers highly unlikely. Censorship only works for short-duration wars like Desert Storm before the sight of bloodied soldiers and civilians spread through the Internet and turn public opinion against the war.

Conventional warfare, maybe.

But look at ISIL. They're savvy at social networking - that's how they recruit vulnerable young people (including Americans and all that) to join their cause.

Yes, the public is against war - that's why Obama and the rest of 'em won't send in troops because war is unpalatable. Instead, ISIL recruits young people to fight for their "cause" using promises that young people like.

Social media has an interesting effect - far from broadening horizons, it narrows them. In effect, people enter a political echo chamber where they associate with those of a similar mentality. It's something ISIL knows, and why they recruit one person, they can usually get the rest of the guy's friends to come along as well.

And it doesn't matter than they were promised 42 virgins or whatever - the real truth is these recruits typically do menial jobs - fetching food and water for the leaders and other stuff.