Argumentation on the Social Web – Problem Space: The Good – Argumentation

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Argumentation on the Social Web – Problem Space: The Good – Argumentation

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Argumentation on the Social Web

Use of Logical and Rhetorical Tactics within Eristic Argumentation

Tom Blount, David Millard and Mark Weal

Introduction

  • Argumentation makes up an important part of human communication
  • Social argumentation differs from formal argumentation
  • Current models struggle to capture the social and rhetorical impact of arguments

Problem Space: The Good

  • Social media is a rich opportunity for analysing "Big" argument structures
  • Allows us to see how massive communities form and conduct discussions

Problem Space: The Bad

  • Design of social spaces causing debate to stagnate (e.g. echo-chambers/filter bubbles)
  • Widespread controversy and abuse (e.g. #GamerGate)
  • Modelling these problems may help us solve them
Gilbert et al. (2009). Blogs are echo chambers: Blogs are echo chambers. 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS’09 Jane (2014). "Your a Ugly, Whorish, Slut" Understanding E-bile. Feminist Media Studies

Argumentation

  • Current models focus on formal logic and reasoning
  • Useful for AI/agent based system
  • Less useful for modelling human beings

Dialectic/Eristic

  • Dialectic: Attempting to solve a problem or discover truth
  • Eristic: Quarrelling to "win"
Kerferd (1981). The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge University Press.

Logic/Rhetoric

  • Logic: Using "facts" to draw conclusions
  • Rhetoric: Using knowledge of the audience

Existing Models: AIF

  • Argument Interchange Format
  • Represents argumentation as a directed graph
  • Aims to link the concepts of natural language argumentation with abstract mathematical modelling
Chesñevar et al. (2006) Towards an argument interchange format. Knowledge Engineering Review

Existing Models: AIF

Existing Models: AIF+

Existing Models: SIOC

  • Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities
  • Cross-platform, cross-service representation of data from the social web
  • Uses FOAF to link people to their online accounts
Breslin et al. (2006). SIOC: an approach to connect web-based communities. International Journal of Web Based Communities

Existing Models: SIOC

Example: Attacks

"Alice isn't qualified to make that argument; she doesn't even have a PhD"

Example: Attacks

"Bob doesn't know what he's talking about - he's a ****ing idiot"

Example: Attacks

"**** off and die"

ASWO: Model

  • Argumentation on the Social Web
  • Ties together the AIF and SIOC frameworks
  • Extends these to cover social argumentation

ASWO: Model

ASWO: Model

ASWO: Investigations

  • Sampled a set of 270 posts from Twitter, Facebook and Reddit
  • Annotated these posts using AIF/SIOC/ASWO
  • Examined the use of logical and rhetorical tactics

Rhetoric over time: Twitter

Rhetoric over time: Facebook

Rhetoric over time: Reddit

Rhetoric per user: Twitter

Rhetoric per user: Facebook

Rhetoric per user: Reddit

ASWO: Analysis

  • Even a subset of social/rhetorical tactics are prevalent in online argumentation
  • May be possible to draw some correlations between post content and tactics

Future work

  • Introduce further ASWO extensions
  • Examine distribution of rhetorical tactics on different social media platforms
  • Examine how different tactics alter a user's perception of the argument as a whole

Conclusion

  • Current models of argumentation do not capture rhetorical force or social impact
  • Social media is an excellent opportunity to analyse argumentation on a large scale
  • The social (and anti-social) aspects of argumentation cannot and should not be ignored

Questions?

Tom Blount - tb12g09@ecs.soton.ac.uk - @Tom_Blount

References

Breslin, J. G., Decker, S., Harth, A., and Bojars, U. (2006). SIOC: an approach to connect web-based communities. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2(2):133–142. Chesñevar, C., McGinnis, J., Modgil, S., Rahwan, I., Reed, C., Simari, G., South, M., Vreeswijk, G., andWillmott, S. (2006). Towards an argument interchange format. Knowledge Engineering Review, 21(4):293–316. Gilbert, E., Bergstrom, T., and Karahalios, K. (2009). Blogs are echo chambers: Blogs are echo chambers. 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS’09, pages 1–10. IEEE. Jane, E. A. (2014). "Your a Ugly, Whorish, Slut" Understanding E-bile. Feminist Media Studies, 14(4):531–546. Kerferd, G. B. (1981). The Sophistic Movement. Cambridge University Press.
Argumentation on the Social Web Use of Logical and Rhetorical Tactics within Eristic Argumentation Tom Blount, David Millard and Mark Weal