On January 7, 2019, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Henning Wachsmuth from the Paderborn University will give a SFB-lecture about "Towards an Argument Search Engine for the Web" in the context of the SFB 901.
Abstract:
For many controversial issues in life and politics, people disagree on what is the right stance towards them, be it the need for feminism, the influence of religion, or the assassination of dictators. Stance is affected by the subjective assessment of arguments on the diverse aspects of an issue. Building stance in a self-determined manner is getting harder in times of fake news and alternative facts. This motivated us in 2017 to launch the first search engine dedicated to arguments on the web, args.me, which aims to oppose the most relevant pro and con arguments on any issue queried for in an unbiased manner. To this end, args.me needs to automatically mine arguments from web pages, assess properties such as their stance and quality, identify those arguments that are relevant to a user's search query, and adequately present them. Starting from the basics of argumentation, this talk will introduce our research around args.me and provide insights into how we stepwise face the manifold challenges towards an argument search engine for the web.
