ParliamentSampo (parlamenttisampo.fi) is a linked open data research infrastructure of Finnish parliamentary data based on speeches extracted from the minutes of the plenary sessions of the Parliament of Finland (PoF). Its updated version finds out who is being laughed at and why, and who interrupts whose speeches.
In 2023, ParliamentSampo published all one million speeches of the Parliament from 1907 to 2022 and the biographical networks of the speakers as an open semantic portal Parlamenttisampo.fi and as data services for researchers to use as part of the national FIN-CLARIAH research infrastructure. The system has now been updated with the speeches of the current Parliament in 2023. At the same time, new possibilities were added to the user interface to search for and analyze speeches that have caused laughter or that have been interrupted by MPs with their interjections. This has been made possible by special annotations made by the Parliament’s minute takers in the speech materials.
YLE journalist Merja Niilola saw this opportunity, got in touch and made a funny news story for YLE online based on Aalto SeCo-Group’s data analysis of the laughter in Parliament which you can read an article (in Finnish), or view in the main TV-news broadcast from 4.1.2025 (also in Finnish).
The public has been particularly interested in the interruptions of speeches at the Parliament and now the laughter. However, ParliamentSampo has a serious purpose, for which it was forged at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki’s Centre for Digital Humanities HELDIG: One of the foundations of Finnish democracy and the rule of law is that Parliament’s decision-making and legislative work are open and the materials related to them are easily accessible and available. The key material related to this is the minutes of plenary sessions since 1907, when the Parliament was founded. Through ParliamentSampo all one million speeches of the Parliament and the networks of almost 3000 members of Parliament are for the first time easily searchable and researchable by everyone using digital humanities tools.
More information about ParliamentSampo: https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/projects/semparl/
Text: Eero Hyvönen / Image: Yle Areena