50 issues of the Riigikogu Toimetised from a data science perspective
The 50-issue corpus of Riigikogu Toimetised, Estonia’s parliamentary journal, offers a rich dataset for computational text analysis. Leveraging data science methods, Nemvalts and Allandi reveal how linguistic patterns, word frequencies, and thematic structures chart the evolution of Estonian political discourse over two decades.
Frequent terms such as “state,” “law,” and “Europe” highlight recurring institutional concerns, while spikes in references to “Ukraine” and “Russia” mirror geopolitical crises. Topic modelling uncovers thematic shifts—from governance and EU integration to energy, education, and security—while “Parliamentary News” traces global legislative trends, with the UK, Russia, and France most frequently cited. This fusion of digital humanities and political analysis repositions the journal as more than a platform of ideas—it becomes a mirror of the state’s democratic imagination, ripe for longitudinal inquiry and civic insight.