Bridging Dictionary: AI-Generated Dictionary of Partisan Language Use

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Bridging Dictionary, an interactive tool that visualizes and summarizes how political terms are perceived differently by Republicans and Democrats, aiming to improve communication across political divides.

Contribution

It presents a novel interactive dictionary that uses language models to analyze and visualize partisan differences in word usage and perception.

Findings

Includes 796 terms with summaries highlighting partisan differences

Provides an interactive interface for exploring word usage, sentiment, and examples

Demonstrates potential use cases for journalists and political communication

Abstract

Words often carry different meanings for people from diverse backgrounds. Today's era of social polarization demands that we choose words carefully to prevent miscommunication, especially in political communication and journalism. To address this issue, we introduce the Bridging Dictionary, an interactive tool designed to illuminate how words are perceived by people with different political views. The Bridging Dictionary includes a static, printable document featuring 796 terms with summaries generated by a large language model. These summaries highlight how the terms are used distinctively by Republicans and Democrats. Additionally, the Bridging Dictionary offers an interactive interface that lets users explore selected words, visualizing their frequency, sentiment, summaries, and examples across political divides. We present a use case for journalists and emphasize the importance of human agency and trust in further enhancing this tool. The deployed version of Bridging Dictionary is available at https://dictionary.ccc-mit.org/.