Abstract
Debating technologies, a newly emerging strand of research into computational technologies to support human debating, offer a powerful way of providing naturalistic, dialogue-based interaction with complex information spaces. The full potential of debating technologies for dialogical argument can, however, only be realized once key technical and engineering challenges are overcome, namely data structure, data availability, and interoperability between components. Our aim in this article is to show that the Argument Web, a vision for integrated, reusable, semantically rich resources connecting views, opinions, arguments, and debates online, offers a solution to these challenges. Through the use of a running example taken from the domain of citizen dialogue, we demonstrate for the first time that different Argument Web components focusing on sensemaking, engagement, and analytics can work in concert as a suite of debating technologies for rich, complex, dialogical argument.
Highlights
AND MOTIVATIONDebating technology is a newly emerging research area that aims to support human debating through the use of technology
Description Propositional information contained in an argument, such as a conclusion, premise, data Subset of information nodes (I-nodes) referring to propositional reports about discourse events Application of a scheme of reasoning or inference Application of a scheme of conflict Application of a scheme of preference Application of a scheme of illocution describing communicative intentions that speakers use to introduce propositional contents Application of a scheme of interaction or protocol describing relations between locutions core argument interchange format (AIF). They operate under a single constraint, namely that data held according to an adjunct ontologies (AOs) can only adumbrate and extend data held according to the AIF
When an agent is instantiated to represent a specific person, he obtains a knowledge base from the Argument Web using AIF+ resources attributed to that person
Summary
Debating technology is a newly emerging research area that aims to support human debating through the use of technology. There are several key technical and engineering challenges that need to be overcome for the full potential of debating technologies for dialogical argument to be realized The first of these challenges is data structure. Components for analyzing natural argument and debate, processing structured and abstract argument data, and evaluating large-scale networks have existed for some time (e.g., Gordon and Karacapilidis [1997], Ravenscroft et al [2006], Klein and Iandoli [2008], and De Liddo and BuckinghamShum [2014]). The engineering of components that build upon one another and interact with each other, common practice in many areas of natural language processing, remains the exception in debating technology These challenges can be addressed by functional and efficient middleware.
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