Analysis of E-Discussions Using Classifier Induced Semantic Spaces

Abstract

We categorise contributions to an e-discussion platform using Classifier Induced Semantic Spaces and Self-Organising Maps. Analysing the contributions delivers insight into the nature of the communication process, makes it more comprehensible and renders the resulting decisions more transparent. Additionally, it can serve as a basis to monitor how the structure of the communication evolves over time. We evaluate our approach on a public ediscussion about an urban planning project, the Berlin Alexanderplatz, Germany. The proposed technique does not only produce high-level-features relevant to structure and monitor computer mediated communication, but also provides insight into how typical a particular document is for a specific category.