The Role of Discourse in Political Decision-Making Through a Computational Model of Rhetoric and Power Dynamics

Abstract

There is an increasing influence of strategic exploitation of discourse in political decision-making, where language is not only a means of communication but also a means of influence and control. The paper explores the use of discourse in political decision-making by creating a computational model that combines rhetoric analysis and power dynamics. The research addresses the gap of systematically examining large-scale political communication by incorporating natural language processing techniques with network-based techniques. Data were gathered through a variety of political sources such as speeches, policy documents, and digital communication platforms, and processed to identify patterns in sentiment, thematic framing and rhetorical strategies. The findings show that the political discourse is repetitive with specific rhetorical strategies, such as framing, emphasis, and consistency of the narrative pattern, significantly contributing to the decision outcome. Furthermore, network analysis highlights that power is concentrated in the hands of a certain number of key players that contribute to the propagation and domination of particular discourses. The interplay of rhetoric and power turns into a reinforcing cycle, whereby the power of influential actors is reinforced by the discourse and vice versa. These results suggest that decision-making process of politics is not merely a rational or institutional process, but a process embedded in communicative practices. The study contributes to the field of the political science because the study introduces a scaled and data-driven method of discourse analysis and its impact on decision making. It also provides valuable insights for policy makers and analysts who are interested in knowing the dynamics of political communication. Future studies ought to consider the inclusion of multimodal data and enhancing context-sensitive modeling to reflect the discourse complexity even in different political contexts.