The Political Futures Tracker is a collaboration between Nesta and the University of Sheffield. It tells us the top political themes, how positive or negative people feel about them, and how far parties and politicians are looking to the future.
The software behind the Political Futures Tracker uses ground breaking language analysis methods, via the GATE architecture, to examine data from Twitter, party websites and speeches. We will also be conducting live analysis on the TV debates running over the next month, seeing how the public respond to what politicians are saying in real time. Leading up to the 2015 UK General Election we will be looking across the political spectrum for emerging trends and innovation insights.
This visualisation allows you to quickly see the top topics being discussed on twitter and the sentiment being expressed regarding each topic. The data used in this example covers the period between 8pm and 10pm on the 2nd of April and shows the main topics and related sentiment of discussion on Twitter that was generated by the debate, hosted by ITV, between the leaders of the seven main political parties.