@inproceedings{ferreira-etal-2026-analyzing,
    title = "Analyzing Debate Dynamics in the {P}ortuguese Parliament with Dialogue Action Flows",
    author = "Ferreira, Patr{\'i}cia  and
      Alves, Ana  and
      Silva, Catarina  and
      Oliveira, Hugo Gon{\c{c}}alo",
    editor = "Souza, Marlo  and
      de-Dios-Flores, Iria  and
      Santos, Diana  and
      Freitas, Larissa  and
      Souza, Jackson Wilke da Cruz  and
      Ribeiro, Eug{\'e}nio",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Processing of {P}ortuguese ({PROPOR} 2026) - Vol. 1",
    month = apr,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Salvador, Brazil",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-dnd/2026.propor-1.37/",
    pages = "369--379",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-387-6",
    abstract = "Analyzing how large-scale multi-party dialogues shape collective behavior is a central challenge in computational linguistics. However, traditional text-based methods often overlook the complex, non-linear turn-taking dynamics defining these interactions. To address this gap, we propose a framework based on Dialogue Action Flows (DAFs) that integrates verbal utterances and non-verbal actions into a unified probabilistic representation of interactional behavior. Interactions are encoded as speaker-action states, forming a probabilistic DAF that reveals dominant behavioral trajectories and recurrent patterns. We validate this framework on five years of Portuguese Parliament debates. Analysis reveals systematic behavioral asymmetries driven by party roles: while government parties exhibit increasing alignment, opposition forces, particularly the radical wing, maintain persistently high conflict. Additionally, the rising volume of interactions across legislative years indicates a progressively heated environment. Overall, our framework provides a quantitative and interpretable approach for modeling polarization, alignment, and interactional dynamics in multi-party political discourse."
}