Discourse on the Web currently can not be appropriately representation, which hampers searching and querying. Based on insights from Web Science, DERI Galway has developed three different approaches for representing and mining of discourse.

1. Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Representing discourse and argumentation
as an application of Web Science
Benjamin Heitmann, Dr. Conor Hayes
Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts Conference 2009
 Copyright 2009 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.
Chapter

2. Introduction
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 The Web mirrors most areas of today’s
society (e.g.: entertainment, science and
humanities)
 Current Web does not capture structure
of critique, argumentation, interpretation
 Representing types and granularity of
discourse and links is necessary
 DERI has 3 approaches to discourse
representation
 Foundation: Web Science as an
interdisciplinary approach to
understanding and engineering the
Web (started by Tim Berners-Lee)
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 2 of 18
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3. Outline
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 Motivation:
Knowledge representation techniques to enable more
sophisticated searching and querying of discourse on
the Web
 Introducing Web Science:
an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the
Web and its evolution
 Applying the Web Science method:
three approaches for discourse representation
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 3 of 18
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4. Discourse and argumentation on the Web
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 TheWeb doesn't properly
capture the dynamic
argumentation structures in
discourse Primary research research
 Current search only captures:
Text paper weblog
reference
 Plain text
Argument
 General links
Counter-
reference
 Citations argument
 No search for: Evaluation
 Relations between concepts reference
Motivation
 Negative relations reference
Conclusion
 Semantics of argumentation:
– Argument, counter-argument publication frequency increases
– Condition, evidence, solution
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 4 of 18
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5. Representing the structure of discourse
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Knowledge on the Web
is not sufficiently
connected
 No standard
vocabularies for
representation of
discourse structure
and link granularity
 Queries are un-intuitive
and imprecise, no
negative queries
 Links are un-typed, and
only on document level
 No semantics of
relationships
Source: “Clickstream Data
Yields High-Resolution
Maps of Science,” Bollen,
Van de Sompel, et al.
PLoS ONE (2009)
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 5 of 18
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6. Insights from Web Science
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The “Web Science” idea was started by Tim Berners-
Lee and researchers from Southampton (see sources)
1. Understanding the current Web requires an
interdisciplinary and holistic view of the Web on a
whole
2. On the Web, engineering and social factors will
influence each other and create a feedback loop
3. Properties of the Web are based on emergent
behaviour, which can be empirically measured
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 6 of 18
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7. A Systems-level view of the Web
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Classical
reductionist
approach does
not work
 Understand-
ing the
current Web
requires an
inter-
disciplinary
view
 No delegation
of research on
one area to
only one
discipline
© Web Science Research Initiative
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 7 of 18
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8. The Web Science Process Model
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On the Web, engineering and
© Lawrence Lessig
social factors will influence
each other.
Increase in complexity:
result is transition from micro
to macro effects Source: CACM
Web Science Article
Example: Evolution of Blogs
 Independent blogs:
Track-backs, Comments, Spam
 Twitter: Microblogging,
HashTags, Location aware
 Facebook: Lifestreaming, Privacy
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 8 of 18
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9. Emergent properties of the Web
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Empirical properties:
 In- and out-degree
distribution of links
 Power laws
 Growth: 7 million new pages Source: “Graph
structure in the
Web”, Broder,
a day in 2005 Kumar et al.
 Emergent patterns:
 Popular tags (folksonomies)
on Web 2.0 sites
© Clay Shirky
 Emerging of an editorial elite
on Wikipedia
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 9 of 18
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10. Approaches for discourse representation
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 The Web Science method and discourse
representation:
 Interdisciplinary: theoretical foundation is based
on Speech act theory and Language Game theory
 Expect a feedback loop between Semantic Web
solutions and usage patterns of community
 Empirical approach: CORAAL: use knowledge
extraction and integration on large data collections
 Normative (engineering) approaches:
– SIOC Argumentation vocabulary:
light-weight and community-driven
– SALT: annotation of argumentation semantics
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 10 of 18
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11. CORAAL: empirical discourse analysis
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Knowledge extraction
and integration
 Pattern discovery
 Use emergent patterns
in large document
collections
 Go beyond text based
search:
 Answer negative queries
 Detect relations between
concepts
 UsesNatural Language
Processing
 No mark-up required
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 11 of 18
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12. CORAAL screen shot of results for the
search term “breast cancer”

13. SIOC argumentation vocabulary
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Light-weight and
informal
 Express structure of
argumentation:
 Who is participating?
 Where are the elements of
the discourse distributed?
 How are the elements
connected?
 Extensibility enables
community
involvement
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 13 of 18
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14. SIOC argumentation vocabulary

15. SALT: Semantically Annotated LaTex
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Enables mark-up of
documents for claim
identification
 Exposes the semantics of
the argumentation.
Examples:
 Claims, explanations
 Rhetorical structure (abstract,
contribution, evaluation)
 Argument, counter-argument
 Creates PDF with content
and structure
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 15 of 18
@deri.org

16. discourse representation in SALT

17. Summary
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
 Representing discourse allows intuitive querying
and searching of the argumentation semantics
 The Web Science method provides insights to
representing discourse:
 Use interdisciplinary approach; Expect feedback loop
between technical and social factors; Detect emergent
properties and patterns
 Three approaches at DERI for representing
discourse:
 CORAAL: empirical, knowledge extraction+integration
 SIOC argumentation vocabulary: light weight, bottom up
 SALT: annotate argumentation semantics in publications
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 17 of 18
@deri.org

18. Questions? and Sources!
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
These slides: http://www.slideshare.net/metaman
 Web Science:“Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to
understanding the web”, Hendler, Shadboldt, Hall, Berners-Lee,
Weitzner, Communications of the ACM (2008)
 CORAAL: demo at http://coraal.deri.ie:8080/coraal
“CORAAL-Dive into publications, Bathe in the Knowledge,”
Novacek, Groza, et al., Journal of Web Semantics, Elsevier (2009)
 SIOC argumentation vocabulary:“Expressing
Argumentative Discussions in Social Media Sites”, Lange, Bojars,
et al., Workshop on Social Data on the Web at the International
Semantic Web Conference (2008)
 SALT:“SALT-Semantically Annotated LaTex for Scientific
Publications,” Groza, Handschuh, et al., European Semantic Web
Conference (2007)
Benjamin.Heitmann
slide 18 of 18
@deri.org