Public Debates on the Web

With the advent of social media, any piece of information may be spread all over the world in no time. Furthermore, the vast number of available communication channels makes it difficult to cross-check information that has been (re-)published on different media in real time. In this context where people may express their positions on many subjects, as well as launching new open initiatives, the public needs a mean to gather and compare ideas and opinions in a structured manner. The present paper presents the WebDEB project, which aims to develop a collaborative platform where opinions, namely arguments, are gathered, analyzed and linked to one another via explicit relations. WebDEB relies on various Natural Language Processing modules to semi-automatically extract information from the web and propose meaningful visualizations to the platform’s contributors. Furthermore, public actors may be identified and attached to the ideas they publish to create a structured knowledge base where annotated texts, extracted positions and alliances may be identified.