[Corpora-List] DEFT'09 Opinion Mining Challenge 3rd Call for participation

[Pierre Zweigenbaum]

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DEFT'09 Opinion Mining Challenge -- Call for participation

Evaluation workshop in text mining:
Multilingual Opinion Analysis

http://deft09.limsi.fr/

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IMPORTANT DATES:

Registration: starting from December 10, 2008
Training corpora: starting from January 7, 2009
** Test: any 3-day period between March 18th and April 15th **
Workshop:  June 22, 2009 (one-day workshop, near Paris, France)

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The DEFT'09 Opinion Mining Challenge

DEFT'09, fifth edition of the DEFT evaluation campaign in text mining
(http://deft.limsi.fr/), will address this year multilingual opinion
analysis.

Opinion Analysis, which already was the subject of a preceding edition
of DEFT, is a topic of interest in more than one way. Companies thrive
on it, sometimes in addition to more classic opinion polls, and the
Web provides this analysis with a profuse matter found in blogs, in
sites dedicated to the evaluation of products, or in online
newspapers. Applications include the analysis and follow-up of a
public or mediatic "image", as well as developments in the spheres of
business (image of a product, of a service, of a company), of public
life (images of mediatic people) and of politics (how a political
project is perceived).

Opinion analysis begins with the detection of the more or less
subjective nature of a text or fragment, i.e. deciding whether it is
conveying a sentiment, a judgement, an opinion, or whether it is
stating plain facts. Parts of text containing an opinion are then
analyzed to assign a value to the expressed opinion, either according
to a positive/negative polarity, or according to a scale of values
(see DEFT'07). Lastly, judgements on a given topic may be tainted by
more global opinions, e.g. political position, or may reflect these
opinions.

Within this famework, we propose three different tasks which can be
addressed separately:

- The first task will be the detection of the objective or subjective
  character of a text, with a corpus of newspaper articles in French,
  English and Italian, consisting of sections Letter from the Editor,
  Debates, Analyses, News in local and foreign politics and
  Economy. The reference is established by projecting each section on
  both the subjective and the objective dimensions. For instance, the
  Letter from the editor, which usually states an opinion, has type
  'subjective', while the News, describing actual facts, have type
  'objective'.

- Detecting the subjective parts of a text (which may be globally
  objective or subjective) will be the second task. In addition to the
  aforementioned newspaper corpus, it will use a set of parliamentary
  debates in French, English and Italian. The reference will be
  established by crossing results from competitors: subjective
  fragments will be those tagged as such by a majority of
  participants.  The majority threshold will be determined
  empirically, by checking the annotations produced by the parsers.

- The third task will be the detection of the political party to which
  a speaker belongs, in the same three political corpora. This party
  will have to be picked from a finite set of European parties.

Competitors must take part in at least one of the three tasks. Each
task must be accomplished at least on the French corpus.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CHALLENGE:

To take part in the DEFT'09 challenge, teams must register via the
online form and sign the 'End-user contract for linguistic resources
in the framework of an evaluation project' found at
(http://deft09.limsi.fr/index.php?id=5&lang=en).

Training corpora will be made available to registered participants
starting January 7, 2009. Training corpora contain 60% of the original
corpora. The remaining 40% of the original corpora will be used for
the test. This test will take place between March 18th and April 15th.
Starting from their chosen date within this interval, participants
will have three days to apply to the test corpora the methods
developed on the training corpora.

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PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

Chair: Patrick Paroubek (LIMSI, Orsay, France)

Members:

Catherine Berrut (LIG, Grenoble)
Fabrice Clérot (France Telecom R&D, Lannion)
Guillaume Cleuziou (LIFO, Orléans)
Béatrice Daille (LINA, Nantes)
Marc El-Bèze (LIA, Avignon)
Patrick Gallinari (LIP6, Paris)
Thierry Hamon (LIPN, Villetaneuse)
Fidélia Ibekwe-SanJuan (ELICO, Lyon)
Pascal Poncelet (LIRMM, Montpellier)
Jean-Michel Renders (XRCE, Grenoble)
Christophe Roche (LISTIC, Annecy)
Mathieu Roche (LIRMM, Montpellier)
Pascale Sébillot (IRISA, Rennes)
François Yvon (LIMSI/TLP, Orsay)


ORGANISING COMMITTEE:

Chairs: Martine Hurault-Plantet, Cyril Grouin
(LIMSI, Orsay, France)

Members:

Béatrice Arnulphy, Jean-Baptiste Berthelin, 
Sarra El Ayari, Anne Garcia-Fernandez, Arnaud Grappy,
Isabelle Robba, Pierre Zweigenbaum (LIMSI)

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