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Comparing congressmen speeches in Dilma Rousseff's impeachment trial and Michel Temer's corruption charges votes [Project] #88

Closed RodrigoMenegat closed 6 years ago

RodrigoMenegat commented 7 years ago

Pitch

I was working in my previous pitch about secret payments but there was no story there. This is my new #3 pitch!

Summary

In 2016 and 2017, two brazilian presidents have faced the threat of being outed from office. Last year, Dilma Rousseff was impeached after losing a vote in both the higher and upper Houses of Brazilian Congress. Last week, the current president Michel Temer won his battle for survival when the lower house saved him from being persecuted in corruption charges.

In both cases, congressmen used the opportunity to appear into national television. Therefore, we saw some memorable (for all the good and bad reasons imaginable) speeches. But how do they compare, statiscally?

Details

I want to do text analysis and discover some differences between the speeches. I am using the Portuguese version of the LIWC Dictionary to measure sentiments and doing some word counting. Possible headline(s):

Data set(s):

Code repository: Here!

Possible problems/fears/questions: The two votes were similar in substance: representatives were deciding if the president should or should not be investigated for presumed crimes. Nevertheless, we are looking at different juridical/political proccesses: Dilma's vote was an impeachment trial, judging political crimes, and Temer's vote was about accusations that he commited a common crime. The House Speaker has also changed during this period, and some regimental rules are different for each case. I need to take this into account.

Work so far

What I already know? Temer defenders made shorter and less agressive speeches than Dilma's defenders. The left-wing parties were the more aggresive and vocal in both cases.

A graph: violin

Checklist

This checklist must be completed before you submit your draft.

simon-pinkmartini commented 7 years ago

Sounds like a worthy analysis! Maybe you could compile a list of very rude words and check who used them more often (as an indication for the style of the parties)? Perhaps some analysis on the level of sentences and words could also be useful to see which side makes the more complex arguments and which speeches are more simplistic?

RodrigoMenegat commented 7 years ago

Update

Pheeew! That was some hardwork, but now I have a lead and what I think is a cool hero graphic.

Content

party_case_sized

Any changes in direction or topic?

I found a lead and will build my story/viz around it:

Even if they ended up winning the vote and kept the president in office for now, Michel Temer's allies seem to have ran away from the spotlight. Their speeches were shorter and less virulent than those made by the opposition.

This behavior is completely different than the one displayed by the representatives that defended Dilma Rousseff during her impeachment vote: they spoke for longer and in a more beligerant tone.

Problems/Questions

TO DO:

SHOULD I?

Checklist

edl2118 commented 7 years ago

Rodrigo, your graphic is really beautiful and informative! I especially like how you have categorized the speeches into the different houses of congress and further into defenders and opponents. One thing that I was a little confused by in the beginning was keeping all of the visual cues in mind. You had a lot going with the colors, the size of the circles, the houses on the y axis, and the average of angry words on the x axis. Just a personal preference but maybe you can move the x axis label (0-5) to the top? I had to scroll down to understand what the position of the circles meant. At first I thought the colors signified the anger in the speeches and the position of the bubble was the number of words used. But then after reading the legend, I realized what the colors and positions actually mean. Maybe I don't really understand the context enough, but I was wondering what the value is in comparing their two speeches? It's such a beautiful graphic though and as you say maybe with a bit more writing on your topic and it'll be perfect.

RodrigoMenegat commented 7 years ago

Final

Project visuals/text

In the vote about corruption charges, Temer supporters avoided the spotlight

Comparatively, allies of Dilma Rousseff spoke for longer and used more aggressive vocabulary when defending her against the impeachment

RODRIGO MENEGAT

“I vote yes”. Those brief, concise words were spoken hundreds of times at the Câmara dos Deputados – the lower house of Brazilian Congress – in the evening of August 2. By voting “yes” to a special commission report that said Mr. Michel Temer was innocent, 263 of the 513 representatives decided to stop the corruption charges against the current President. If he had lost, the Supreme Federal Court could order an official investigation and remove him from office.

Temer’s allies won by a wide margin. For the investigation to continue, the opposition needed to gather 342 votes, but only reached 227. Despite being the undisputable majority, though, they seem to have ran away from the spotlight. The speeches they delivered when voting were shorter and less virulent than those of the the opposition. This behavior is completely different than the one displayed by the representatives that defended Dilma Rousseff during her impeachment vote, in 2016: even being far outnumbered, her supporters spoke for longer and in a more belligerent tone.

A quantitative analysis of the words used by congressmen in both occasions shows precisely that. Most of the representatives who sided with Temer used around 50 characters in their pronouncements. This is barely sufficient to say, in Portuguese, “I vote yes with the report, Mr. President”. Not only Dilma’s defenders spoke considerably more, but they also used a bigger percentage of words that express anger.

Possibly, Temer supporters were trying to avoid a strong association with the president that has the lowest popularity ratings in Brazilian politics since the direct elections were reestablished in the country, in 1992. Dilma's ratings were also low in 2016, but some sectors of Brazilian society gave her vocal support until the very end. The perspective of seeing their president deposed in what they considered a "soft coup" may have sparked rage among those who sided with her.

But, after all, what is considered an angry word? Those calculations were made using a dictionary that puts words in 64 different categories, translated from english by researchers of the Interinstitutional Center for Computational Linguistics from the University of São Paulo (USP). “Anger” is one of those bins.

Results should be taken with a grain of salt: since we are evaluating standalone words, the measure will overlook more complex usages of language such as irony, contempt or hidden threats.

party_case_small

violin-length

Details

Headline: In the vote about corruption charges, Temer supporters avoided the spotlight

Published website version: Here!

Code repository: Here!

Final data set(s): See repository

What did you find to be the most difficult part of this project?

Coming up with the visuals. I ended up making the bubble changes by size because I wasn't able to make them change by color. Also, I had to manually scale them on Illustrator, as well! I also found it hard to present the story for a non-Brazilian audience. If you're familiar with Brazilian politics, less explaining needs to be done and the overall trend is more evident.

Are you satisfied with what you produced? Is there anything you would like to change or improve?

Yes. I think the main chart is complex, yes, but if the reader take the time to actually read it, it shows some nice insights. I am not sure of how many people would do that, though. I probably cound find a way of presenting the story in a simpler way to a wider audience.

Checklist