Classification of Westminster Parliamentary constituencies using e-petition data
Classification of Westminster Parliamentary constituencies using e-petition data
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DOI：
10.1140/epjds/s13688-017-0113-9
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发表时间：
2017-08-08
期刊：
影响因子：
3.6
通讯作者：
Morris, Michelle A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Clark, Stephen;Lomax, Nik;Morris, Michelle A.
在代议制民主中，重要的是政治家了解其选民的愿望、愿望和关切。然而，衡量这些观点的机会是有限的，在这个数据新颖的时代，人们的想法转向了哪些替代的、次要的数据来源可以让政客们了解当地的关切。其中一个数据来源是电子请愿书(e-请愿书)的签字人。在过去十年中，这种电子请愿书的受欢迎程度大大提高，允许公众在线发起和签署电子请愿书，受欢迎的电子请愿书引起媒体关注，政府做出回应，最终在议会进行辩论。因此，这些数据在可获得性方面是新颖的，尚未被广泛用于研究目的。在本文中，我们将使用电子请愿数据来展示如何使用威斯敏斯特议会选区的语义类，通过EM算法将其拟合为高斯有限混合模型，来对选区进行类型化。我们确定了四个阶层：国内自由党；国际自由党；怀旧的英国人和农村关注的人，并说明它们如何与选举结果相对应。讨论了这一办法的调查结果及其在纳入新的电子请愿书和适应选举地域变化方面的效用。
In a representative democracy it is important that politicians have knowledge of the desires, aspirations and concerns of their constituents. Opportunities to gauge these opinions are however limited and, in the era of novel data, thoughts turn to what alternative, secondary, data sources may be available to keep politicians informed about local concerns. One such source of data are signatories to electronic petitions (e-petitions). Such e-petitions have risen greatly in popularity over the past decade and allow members of the public to initiate and sign an e-petition online, with popular e-petitions resulting in media attention, a response from the government or ultimately a debate in parliament. These data are thus novel in their availability and have not yet been widely used for research purposes. In this article we will use the e-petition data to show how semantic classes of Westminster Parliamentary constituencies, fitted as Gaussian finite mixture models via EM algorithm, can be used to typify constituencies. We identify four classes: Domestic Liberals; International Liberals; Nostalgic Brits and Rural Concerns, and illustrate how they map onto electoral results. The findings and the utility of this approach to incorporate new e-petitions and adapt to changes in electoral geography are discussed.