Visualization of Discussion Structure for Discovering and Understanding Discussion Points

Abstract

Structured discussion showing complicated flow of topics greatly helps us discover and understand the main points. In this paper, we propose a new system which visualizes discussion structure by linking the topic segments identified from a minutes of meeting. Based on the structured discussion, we also aim at discovering influential topic segments triggering fruitful discussion by applying Influence Diffusion Model (IDM). The results of questionnaire surveys show that (1) the structured discussions can support user's understanding of discussions instinctively (2) the precision of influential topic segments by IDM is higher than that by in-degree and out-degree measurements.