1. Searching
Political Data
by Strategy
Roberto Cornacchia
Jaap Kamps
Wouter Alink
Arjen P. de Vries
info@spinque.com
2. Search by Strategy
An iterative 2-stage search process
Express domain knowledge as high-level
search strategies
Generate search engine from the strategy
A dynamic REST API
UI controls for unspecified parameters
Separate search strategy definition (the
how) from actual searching and browsing
of data collections (the what)
5. Search by Strategy captures:
Arbitrary retrieval unit types (not just
documents)
E.g., expert finding, entity search
“Semantic” search
The building blocks operate on scored triples
Semi-structured search
Data objects may be structured in hierarchies
Exploratory search
Use facets as preferences
6. Exposé
Searching the parliamentary proceedings
of the Dutch parliament
Complete transcripts of everything said in
parliament
Organized by parliamentary session
Detailing who sais what in what role and
context
7. Exposé
Original data is PDF, transformed into
XML by award-winning project Political
Mashup
http://politicalmashup.nl/
8. In Politics…
Essence is not only what is said, but also
by who and to whom, and why
Concrete example:
Wilders sais “knettergek” in parliament (in
2007) – is this remarkable?
9.
10. “Knettergek” case
The word “knettergek” has been used many
times in parliament…
… but never to address a member of the
government
12. Flexibility
Concrete case:
Maarten: “I cannot find Prof. Mokken, who I
know has been spoken about in parliament
multiple times!”
13. Flexibility
Default indexing uses stemming and
normalization
But… searching for people’s names (and,
as we mention it, many other domain
specific terminology) can be negatively
affected by stemming
“Mokken” transformed into “mok”, leading us to
geographic locations “Mook” and “De Mok”, but not
to the famous professor!
19. Advantages
Define and execute custom build search
strategies
Specialized to the task, or even to the search
at hand
Search multiple data sources at once
Explore and refine results interactively
“Search provenance”
Complete transparency on how search results
were obtained
20. Position Statement
Search professionals think in terms of
search strategies already
Let them design their own strategies, and
thereby tailor their search engines
So they learn to trust what we claim to be
the effective information retrieval
techniques!