Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis

Abstract The automated analysis of different trends in online debating forums is an interesting tool for sampling the agreement between citizens in different topics. In previous work, we have defined computational models to measure different values in these online debating forums. One component in t...

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Main Authors: Teresa Alsinet, Josep Argelich, Ramón Béjar, Daniel Gibert, Jordi Planes
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer 2022-10-01
Series:International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1007/s44196-022-00147-9
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author Teresa Alsinet
Josep Argelich
Ramón Béjar
Daniel Gibert
Jordi Planes
author_facet Teresa Alsinet
Josep Argelich
Ramón Béjar
Daniel Gibert
Jordi Planes
author_sort Teresa Alsinet
collection DOAJ
description Abstract The automated analysis of different trends in online debating forums is an interesting tool for sampling the agreement between citizens in different topics. In previous work, we have defined computational models to measure different values in these online debating forums. One component in these models has been the identification of the set of accepted posts by an argumentation problem that characterizes this accepted set through a particular argumentation acceptance semantics. A second component is the classification of posts into two groups: the ones that agree with the root post of the debate, and the ones that disagree with it. Once we compute the set of accepted posts, we compute the different measures we are interested to get from the debate, as functions defined over the bipartition of the posts and the set of accepted posts. In this work, we propose to explore the use of graph neural networks (GNNs), based on graph isomorphism networks, to solve the problem of computing these measures, using as input the debate tree, instead of using our previous argumentation reasoning system. We focus on the particular online debate forum Reddit, and on the computation of a measure of the polarization in the debate. We explore the use of two different approaches: one where a single GNN model computes directly the polarization of the debate, and another one where the polarization is computed using two different GNNs: the first one to compute the accepted posts of the debate, and the second one to compute the bipartition of the posts of the debate. Our results over a set of Reddit debates show that GNNs can be used to compute the polarization measure with an acceptable error, even if the number of layers of the network is bounded by a constant. We observed that the model based on a single GNN shows the lowest error, yet the one based on two GNNs has more flexibility to compute additional measures from the debates. We also compared the execution time of our GNN-based models with a previous approach based on a distributed algorithm for the computation of the accepted posts, and observed a better performance.
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spelling doaj.art-a35135da03f5491688a846b3f65c6bee2022-12-22T04:37:03ZengSpringerInternational Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems1875-68832022-10-0115111210.1007/s44196-022-00147-9Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation AnalysisTeresa Alsinet0Josep Argelich1Ramón Béjar2Daniel Gibert3Jordi Planes4INSPIRES Research Center, University of LleidaINSPIRES Research Center, University of LleidaINSPIRES Research Center, University of LleidaCeADAR, University College DublinINSPIRES Research Center, University of LleidaAbstract The automated analysis of different trends in online debating forums is an interesting tool for sampling the agreement between citizens in different topics. In previous work, we have defined computational models to measure different values in these online debating forums. One component in these models has been the identification of the set of accepted posts by an argumentation problem that characterizes this accepted set through a particular argumentation acceptance semantics. A second component is the classification of posts into two groups: the ones that agree with the root post of the debate, and the ones that disagree with it. Once we compute the set of accepted posts, we compute the different measures we are interested to get from the debate, as functions defined over the bipartition of the posts and the set of accepted posts. In this work, we propose to explore the use of graph neural networks (GNNs), based on graph isomorphism networks, to solve the problem of computing these measures, using as input the debate tree, instead of using our previous argumentation reasoning system. We focus on the particular online debate forum Reddit, and on the computation of a measure of the polarization in the debate. We explore the use of two different approaches: one where a single GNN model computes directly the polarization of the debate, and another one where the polarization is computed using two different GNNs: the first one to compute the accepted posts of the debate, and the second one to compute the bipartition of the posts of the debate. Our results over a set of Reddit debates show that GNNs can be used to compute the polarization measure with an acceptable error, even if the number of layers of the network is bounded by a constant. We observed that the model based on a single GNN shows the lowest error, yet the one based on two GNNs has more flexibility to compute additional measures from the debates. We also compared the execution time of our GNN-based models with a previous approach based on a distributed algorithm for the computation of the accepted posts, and observed a better performance.https://doi.org/10.1007/s44196-022-00147-9RedditSocial networks analysisArgumentationGraph neural networks
spellingShingle Teresa Alsinet
Josep Argelich
Ramón Béjar
Daniel Gibert
Jordi Planes
Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis
International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems
Reddit
Social networks analysis
Argumentation
Graph neural networks
title Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis
title_full Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis
title_fullStr Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis
title_short Argumentation Reasoning with Graph Isomorphism Networks for Reddit Conversation Analysis
title_sort argumentation reasoning with graph isomorphism networks for reddit conversation analysis
topic Reddit
Social networks analysis
Argumentation
Graph neural networks
url https://doi.org/10.1007/s44196-022-00147-9
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