An official website of the United States government
We present a new dataset for studying conversation disentanglement in movies and TV series. While previous work has focused on conversation disentanglement in IRC chatroom dialogues, movies and TV shows provide a space for studying complex pragmatic patterns of floor and topic change in face-to-face multi-party interactions. In this work, we draw on theoretical research in sociolinguistics, sociology, and film studies to operationalize a conversational thread (including the notion of a floor change) in dramatic texts, and use that definition to annotate a dataset of 10,033 dialogue turns (comprising 2,209 threads) from 831 movies. We compare the performance of several disentanglement models on this dramatic dataset, and apply the best-performing model to disentangle 808 movies. We see that, contrary to expectation, average thread lengths do not decrease significantly over the past 40 years, and characters portrayed by actors who are women, while underrepresented, initiate more new conversational threads relative to their speaking time.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on April 8, 2026
Time to politicization: the emergence and effects of politics on science YouTube videos
Increasingly, political tensions are seeping into everyday topics. This imposition of politics can change the flow of and dynamics within conversation. In this mixed-methods study, we address the act of politicizing science on YouTube. Using comment data from educational science videos, we identify the moment of explicit politicization and how this changes the subsequent conversation. Results show that politicization becomes more likely as the thread goes on and once a thread has been politicized, it remains that way. Furthermore, after politicization the toxicity of the subsequent comments increases, “tipping” the conversation about science toward personal accusations and attacks about political identity and partisanship. Qualitative insights reveal common “pathways” to politicization, which can be used to design mitigation strategies.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2106476
- PAR ID:
- 10591184
- Publisher / Repository:
- Routledge
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Information Technology & Politics
- ISSN:
- 1933-1681
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 17
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Political discourse is the soul of democracy, but misunderstanding and conflict can fester in divisive conversations. The widespread shift to online discourse exacerbates many of these problems and corrodes the capacity of diverse societies to cooperate in solving social problems. Scholars and civil society groups promote interventions that make conversations less divisive or more productive, but scaling these efforts to online discourse is challenging. We conduct a large-scale experiment that demonstrates how online conversations about divisive topics can be improved with AI tools. Specifically, we employ a large language model to make real-time, evidence-based recommendations intended to improve participants’ perception of feeling understood. These interventions improve reported conversation quality, promote democratic reciprocity, and improve the tone, without systematically changing the content of the conversation or moving people’s policy attitudes.more » « less
-
Climate challenges in the 21st century have given rise to re-thinking the role of local governments in confronting larger-than-local challenges. However, anthropogenic climate change has become a weaponized partisan issue, and surveys show a growing partisan tribalization over climate science. Empowering local governments to take broader climate and sustainability actions is one avenue for addressing this. This study tests a localism hypothesis, which holds that citizens will be more supportive of local climate efforts when the benefits are internalized by the community. This deference to locally directed actions springs from the predisposition for decentralization of political authority widely attributed to localism, a directional goal of motivated reasoners which may feed into social identity, cohesion and shared community values. Through three survey experiments, the study finds citizens are more likely to favor continuation of local climate-related programs in the face of high performance and politicization at the federal level.more » « less
-
Abstract Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.more » « less
-
Our demo showcases a choice-based interactive narrative game created to teach responsible conduct of research and research ethics. It re-imagines the experience of a game previously published in the literature, using a content-selection system that dynamically constructs dialogue choices during play. Our goal is to provide players with more opportunities to experience agency than they would have with the original game’s hand-authored branching narrative structure. Primarily, our system implements a conversation thread-switching mechanic that allows players to fluidly enter/exit conversation topics as one would in a real-life conversation.more » « less
