A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches
The availability of automatic data analysis tools and large databases have enabled new ways of studying language and communication that were not possible in the pre-information era. Here we apply a quantitative analysis to a large dataset of USA congressional speeches made over a period of 138 years...
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doaj-cd587b1a3b89430ba64dd8e5fcc82bc72020-11-25T02:53:00ZengElsevierHeliyon2405-84402020-08-0168e04417A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speechesEthan C. Tucker0Colton J. Capps1Lior Shamir2Department of Computer Science, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS 66502, USADepartment of Computer Science, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS 66502, USACorresponding author.; Department of Computer Science, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS 66502, USAThe availability of automatic data analysis tools and large databases have enabled new ways of studying language and communication that were not possible in the pre-information era. Here we apply a quantitative analysis to a large dataset of USA congressional speeches made over a period of 138 years. The analysis reveals that the readability index of congressional speeches increased consistently until the 96th congress, and then started to decline. Congressional speeches have also become more positive over time, and in general express more sentiments compared to speeches made in the 19th century or early 20th century. The analysis also shows statistically significant differences between Democratic and Republican congressional speeches.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020312615SpeechesText analysisData sciencePoliticsFeature extractionData analytics |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Ethan C. Tucker Colton J. Capps Lior Shamir |
spellingShingle |
Ethan C. Tucker Colton J. Capps Lior Shamir A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches Heliyon Speeches Text analysis Data science Politics Feature extraction Data analytics |
author_facet |
Ethan C. Tucker Colton J. Capps Lior Shamir |
author_sort |
Ethan C. Tucker |
title |
A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches |
title_short |
A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches |
title_full |
A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches |
title_fullStr |
A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches |
title_full_unstemmed |
A data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches |
title_sort |
data science approach to 138 years of congressional speeches |
publisher |
Elsevier |
series |
Heliyon |
issn |
2405-8440 |
publishDate |
2020-08-01 |
description |
The availability of automatic data analysis tools and large databases have enabled new ways of studying language and communication that were not possible in the pre-information era. Here we apply a quantitative analysis to a large dataset of USA congressional speeches made over a period of 138 years. The analysis reveals that the readability index of congressional speeches increased consistently until the 96th congress, and then started to decline. Congressional speeches have also become more positive over time, and in general express more sentiments compared to speeches made in the 19th century or early 20th century. The analysis also shows statistically significant differences between Democratic and Republican congressional speeches. |
topic |
Speeches Text analysis Data science Politics Feature extraction Data analytics |
url |
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844020312615 |
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