Debating Evil: Using Word Embeddings to Analyse Parliamentary Debates on War Criminals in the Netherlands Cover Image

Debating Evil: Using Word Embeddings to Analyse Parliamentary Debates on War Criminals in the Netherlands
Debating Evil: Using Word Embeddings to Analyse Parliamentary Debates on War Criminals in the Netherlands

Author(s): Milan M. Van Lange, Ralf D. Futselaar
Subject(s): Military history, Political history, Computational linguistics, Penology, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of the Holocaust
Published by: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino
Keywords: War Criminals; Penal History; Parliamentary History; Word2Vec; Word Embedding Models;

Summary/Abstract: We are proposing a method to investigate changes in historical discourse by using large bodies of text and word embedding models. As a case study, we investigate discussions in Dutch Parliament about the punishment of war criminals in the period 1945–1975. We will demonstrate how word embedding models, trained with Google’s Word2Vec algorithm, can be used to trace historical developments in parliamentary vocabulary through time.

  • Issue Year: 59/2019
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 140-156
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: English