Topic-labelled political speeches

Political Theory

• Framing
• Problems "do not exist out there"
• Framing means "portraying an issue from one perspective to the necessary exclusion of alternative
  perspectives"
• Aims at "inducing a cognitive bias through consistent linkage between a topic and a specific context (frame)."

Frames' political significance

• Our interpretation of a problem tends to imply what solutions (policies) are adequate for addressing it
• "[Political] Contestants manipulate, strategize and fight to have their frame accepted"

Project objective

• Create a pre-processed dataset of topic-labelled political speeches from the Bundestag

Datasource 1: DIP

Datasource 2: Transcripts of parliamentary debates

• Text files that can be used to extract the speeches that pertain to a particular agenda item

Ambitions (on a scale from MVP to infinite awesomeness)

• Finish the project
• Host the data
• Implement incremental scrapes

Ambitions

• Finish the project
• Host the data
• Implement incremental scrapes
• Classification

Ambitions

• Finish the project
• Host the data
• Implement incremental scrapes
• Classification
• Extend the project to new countries
• Topic dictionary
• Centralised repository for searchable, topic-labelled political speeches

References

• https://github.com/dmariassy/scraparl
• Boin, Hart, McConnel: Crisis Exploitation - Political and Policy Impacts of Framing Contests (2008)
• Boydstun et al.: Identifying Media Frames and Frame Dynamics Within and Across Policy Issues (2013)
• Tsur, Calacci, Lazer: A Frame of Mind - Using Statistical Models for Detection of Framing and Agenda Setting Campaigns (2015)