Lunch & Learn about SWERIK with Fredrik Mohammadi Norén
In a world full of fake news, deepfakes, and AI trying to influence elections, how can data and technology actually help us strengthen democracy and keep politicians accountable?
That’s exactly what our next Lunch & Learn will explore.
Swedish researcher Fredrik Mohammadi Norén, Associate professor in media and communication at Malmö University, will walk us through SWERIK - basically a giant, searchable time machine that links together 150 years of Swedish parliamentary debates so anyone can see who said what, when, and why.
Want to understand how transparent political data can help us navigate today’s chaotic information landscape? Bring your lunch, come and listen, ask questions and learn!
This lunch is a concept with a welcoming "pop-in" vibe but the presentation start 12AM sharp.
ABSTRACT
Swedish Riksdag 1867–2022: An Ecosystem of Linked Open Data (SWERIK)
The parliament has the power to transform society’s future. Its documents constitute a democratic resource for our present-day that, in turn, can be used by researchers to remodel our understanding of the past. During the last decade, the Swedish parliamentary documents – parliamentary records (which include the Riksdag debates), government bills, private members’ motions, and committee reports – have all been digitized. These four document categories constitute the central part of the Swedish legislation process. Taken together, these documents form a rich source to study political culture and democratic development over long periods. However, the lack of an interconnected metadata structure with linked parliamentary data, including a patchwork of gaps and digitization errors, makes the current state of these compiled digitized documents a primitive research infrastructure. The purpose of SWERIK is to address these limitations by constructing a research corpus with an ecosystem of linked open data of the parliamentary documents from the bicameral and unicameral Riksdag, from 1867 to today.
This presentation will primarily focus on how we have turned over 150 years of political discourse – comprising more than a million speeches from the parliamentary records – into a linked open data corpus, connecting individual members of parliament to the speeches they held in the chamber.