Cited by 542Computational and Text Analysis MethodsSentiment Analysis and Opinion MiningElectoral Systems and Political Participation

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 54 of the 54 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 21 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Fightin' Words: Lexical Feature Selection and Evaluation for Identifying the Content of Political Conflict

Open access
Monroe, Burt L., Colaresi, Michael P., Quinn, Kevin M.·2008·Political Analysis

Abstract

Entries in the burgeoning “text-as-data” movement are often accompanied by lists or visualizations of how word (or other lexical feature) usage differs across some pair or set of documents. These are intended either to establish some target semantic concept (like the content of partisan frames) to estimate word-specific measures that feed forward into another analysis (like locating parties in ideological space) or both. We discuss a variety of techniques for selecting words that capture partisan, or other, differences in political speech and for evaluating the relative importance of those words. We introduce and emphasize several new approaches based on Bayesian shrinkage and regularization. We illustrate the relative utility of these approaches with analyses of partisan, gender, and distributive speech in the U.S. Senate.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

Monroe critiques common lexical feature-selection and evaluation methods for text-as-data and proposes model-based Bayesian shrinkage/regularization approaches, illustrated on U.S. Senate speech. The recommended methods reduce overemphasis on very frequent or very rare words and yield more semantically valid partisan word lists.

Key findings

  • Nonmodel-based measures fail to account for sampling variation: difference of proportions is dominated by high-frequency words (top Democratic list includes “to,” “my,” “and”; top Republican list includes “the,” “of,” “not”), while log-odds-ratios are dominated by obscure low-frequency words (e.g., “bankruptci,” “Snowe,” “infant,” “Chines”). The paper notes the odds of a Republican using “babi” are 5.4 times a Democrat’s, but the odds of using “April” are 7.4 times a Democrat’s.
  • Model-based z-scores of log-odds-ratios improve semantic validity: abortion speech features Republican framing around baby/child and partial-birth procedure, and Democratic framing around woman/women and her/their right to choose.
  • An informative Dirichlet prior (prior sample of 500 words per party per day) replaces function words in the Republican top 20 with “aliv,” “infant,” “brutal,” “brain,” and “necessari.” A Laplace prior shrinks most contrasts to exactly zero, leaving prominent Republican words “kill,” “babi,” “procedur,” “child,” “mother,” “abort” and Democratic words “women,” “woman,” “decis,” “famili,” “friend,” “right.”
  • Applications show taxes were more partisan than abortion; media odds of using Democratic over Republican tax frames were roughly 20% higher for The New York Times than The Washington Times and roughly 63% higher for NPR than Fox News. Defense polarization fell near zero after 9/11 and rose through and after the invasion of Iraq.

Methods

  • Design: methodological critique and proposal, with a running example of U.S. Senate speeches on abortion in the 106th Congress (1999–2000), using topics from Quinn et al. (2006) for Senate speech 1997–2004.
  • Data: Congressional Speech Corpus from the public-domain Congressional Record, truncated at December 31, 2004, parsed into tagged XML, filtered for capitalization/punctuation, and stemmed with the Porter Snowball II stemmer.
  • Analysis: compares classification, nonmodel-based measures (difference of frequencies/proportions, stop-word removal, odds/log-odds, tf.idf, WordScores), then multinomial/Dirichlet model-based log-odds-ratio estimates, z-scores, informative Dirichlet shrinkage, and Laplace-prior L1 regularization; extends to taxes, gender within Democrats, dynamics, polarization, and state-level dimensionality.

Limitations

  • Stated: the Laplace prior’s nondifferentiability increases computational complexity even for point estimates and makes dynamic extension difficult, so it is less ideal for feature evaluation and feed-forward applications; the Dirichlet approach still leaves unclear where to draw the line for feature selection and may overfit if estimates feed forward.
  • Stated: the media framing analysis is a “toy example,” and the applications are intended to illustrate possibilities rather than provide full substantive analyses.
  • Evident: empirical demonstrations are limited to U.S. Senate speech from 1997–2004 and selected topics; no validation outside this corpus is reported.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/pan/mpn018

Cites

54 of 54 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

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Verification

Claims the paper makes

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Show all 65 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 35
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 42
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 2
67 of 67
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Different speech patterns across groups can flow from both partisan and nonpartisan sources, including idiosyncrasies of dialect and style.

    “Additionally, we know a priori that different speech patterns across groups can flow from both partisan and nonpartisan sources, including idiosyncrasies of dialect and style.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The approximations in Equations 17 and 19 assume y(i)_kw >> a(i)_kw, y_kw >> a_kw and ignore covariance terms that will typically be close to 0.

    “Where the approximations in Equations 17 and 19 assume y ðiÞ kw ) a ðiÞ kw ; y kw ) a kw and ignore covariance terms that will typically be close to 0”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Equations 18 and 20 additionally assume that n(i)_k >> y(i)_kw and n_k >> y_kw.

    “while Equations 18 and 20 additionally assume that n ðiÞ k ) y ðiÞ kw and n k ) y kw .”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Sports speeches congratulating a home state team have no partisan structure.

    “For example, our Senate analysis finds a large number of ''sports'' speeches congratulating a home state team.We would not expect these to have partisan structure.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Democrats are more likely than Republicans to address women's issues and have more women members serving in the Senate than Republicans.

    “Democrats are both more likely than Republicans to address ''women's issues,'' and also have more women members serving in the Senate than do the Republicans.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The New York Times and Washington Times, and NPR and Fox News, are at different partisan extremes.

    “We conducted Lexis-Nexis searches of two newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Times, and two broadcast news sources, National Public Radio and Fox News, widely thought to be, relatively speaking, at different partisan extremes.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    A genuine partisan realignment or issue evolution generally occurs only over fairly long time frames.

    “This generally occurred (or been agreed to have occurred) only over fairly long time frames.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Speech data offers leverage on analyzing partisan conflict.

    “Speech offers interesting potential leverage on the problem.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Prior efforts to systematically analyze political conflict have focused on easily quantified behaviors that obscure substance.

    “Efforts to systematically analyze political conflict, especially in the American context, have previously focused on behaviors that are easily quantified but obscure substance (e.g., votes).”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Language use in political speech is a valid indicator of political conflict and preferences.

    “We have seen that static snapshots can illuminate the content of a particular partisan conflict.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    More recent attempts to analyze political dynamics by summarizing text have fallen into traps including inefficiency and overfitting idiosyncratic group differences in low- or high-frequency words.

    “More recent attempts to investigating political dynamics that summarize and organize text have fallen into other traps, including inefficiency (e.g., classification techniques), and overfitting idiosyncratic group differences in low-or high-frequency words (e.g., tf.idf or difference of proportions).”
11 of 11

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Citations

Cites

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Show all 54 references

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. Diaz, 2005, Representing women? Female legislators in West European parliaments
  2. Carmines, 1990, Issue evolution
  3. The counts of estate, prescription, wage, wealthiest, death, bracket, flat, penalty, respectively, are (2078, 620, 1159, 208, 1280, 164, 431, 743) for The New York Times, (1032, 376, 692, 84, 731, 189, 399, 720) for The Washington Times, (172, 214, 224, 68, 209, 47, 68, 174) for National Public Radio, and (167, 362, 238, 54, 450, 55, 197, 281) for Fox News.
  4. Monroe, 2004, Society for Political Methodology
  5. Mucciaroni, 2006, Deliberative choice: Debating public policy in congress
  6. Riker, 1986, The art of political manipulation
  7. Emily, 2004, From boys to men
  8. Lakoff, 2004, Don't think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate
  9. Monroe, 2006, United States congressional speech corpus

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Monroe, B. L., Colaresi, M. P., & Quinn, K. M.
Affiliations
  • Pennsylvania State University (US)
  • Michigan State University (US)
  • Harvard University (US)
Corresponding author
  • Monroe, Burt L.
  • Colaresi, Michael P.
  • Quinn, Kevin M.
Venue
Political Analysis
Published
2008
Volume
16
Issue
4
Pages
372-403
ISSN
  • 1047-1987 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4989
OpenAlex
W2038411619
Cited by
542
References
54
Citations by year
2026: 44 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 69 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 30 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 13
FWCI
42.88
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Political Analysis (publishedVersion, public-domain)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Science Foundation
Topics
  • Social Sciences › General Social Sciences › Computational and Text Analysis Methods
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
Keywords
political conflict, Bayesian shrinkage, regularization, text-as-data, distributive politics, United States Senate, ideological space

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