TY - JOUR
T1 - Social voting advice applications-definitions, challenges, datasets and evaluation
AU - Katakis, Ioannis
AU - Tsapatsoulis, Nicolas
AU - Mendez, Fernando
AU - Triga, Vasiliki
AU - Djouvas, Constantinos
PY - 2014/1/1
Y1 - 2014/1/1
N2 - Voting advice applications (VAAs) are online tools that have become increasingly popular and purportedly aid users in deciding which party/candidate to vote for during an election. In this paper we present an innovation to current VAA design which is based on the introduction of a social network element. We refer to this new type of online tool as a social voting advice application (SVAA). SVAAs extend VAAs by providing (a) community-based recommendations, (b) comparison of users' political opinions, and (c) a channel of user communication. In addition, SVAAs enriched with data mining modules, can operate as citizen sensors recording the sentiment of the electorate on issues and candidates. Drawing on VAA datasets generated by the Preference Matcher research consortium, we evaluate the results of the first VAA-Choose4Greece- which incorporated social voting features and was launched during the landmark Greek national elections of 2012. We demonstrate how an SVAA can provide community based features and, at the same time, serve as a citizen sensor. Evaluation of the proposed techniques is realized on a series of datasets collected from various VAAs, including Choose4Greece. The collection is made available online in order to promote research in the field.
AB - Voting advice applications (VAAs) are online tools that have become increasingly popular and purportedly aid users in deciding which party/candidate to vote for during an election. In this paper we present an innovation to current VAA design which is based on the introduction of a social network element. We refer to this new type of online tool as a social voting advice application (SVAA). SVAAs extend VAAs by providing (a) community-based recommendations, (b) comparison of users' political opinions, and (c) a channel of user communication. In addition, SVAAs enriched with data mining modules, can operate as citizen sensors recording the sentiment of the electorate on issues and candidates. Drawing on VAA datasets generated by the Preference Matcher research consortium, we evaluate the results of the first VAA-Choose4Greece- which incorporated social voting features and was launched during the landmark Greek national elections of 2012. We demonstrate how an SVAA can provide community based features and, at the same time, serve as a citizen sensor. Evaluation of the proposed techniques is realized on a series of datasets collected from various VAAs, including Choose4Greece. The collection is made available online in order to promote research in the field.
KW - Data analysis
KW - decision support systems
KW - knowledge discovery
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84903168206&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TCYB.2013.2279019
DO - 10.1109/TCYB.2013.2279019
M3 - Article
C2 - 24058045
AN - SCOPUS:84903168206
SN - 2168-2267
VL - 44
SP - 1039
EP - 1052
JO - IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
IS - 7
M1 - 6600899
ER -