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Mapping Left-Right Associations

Interactive Shiny app visualizing how political elites associate words with "left" and "right" ideology, based on Warode (2025).

Live App: https://lukas-warode.shinyapps.io/lr-words-map/

Overview

The app maps word associations along two dimensions:

  • X-axis (Position): Mean left-right self-placement of people using the word (1-11 scale)
  • Y-axis (Semantics): How "left" or "right" a word is semantically (-1 to +1)

This creates four quadrants:

Quadrant Description Examples
In-Ideology Left Left-leaning people describing "left" justice, peace, solidarity
Out-Ideology Left Right-leaning people describing "left" socialism, paternalism
In-Ideology Right Right-leaning people describing "right" patriotism, family, freedom
Out-Ideology Right Left-leaning people describing "right" racism, nationalism

Features

  • Interactive scatter plot with click-to-select words
  • Distribution plot showing left-right self-placement of respondents
  • Framework diagram highlighting the word's quadrant position
  • Downloadable figures (PNG format)
  • Mobile-responsive design

Data

The app uses curated data from German GLES candidate studies (2013, 2017, 2021):

File Description
lr_pos_sem_curated.csv Main word data (229 curated words)
df_exp_left_curated.csv Individual-level data for left associations
df_exp_right_curated.csv Individual-level data for right associations

Understanding Mean Values

The app displays different means in different contexts:

Location Value Description
Scatter plot / UI lr_self_mean Weighted mean of ALL respondents
Distribution plot lr_self_mean_left or _right Mean of the specific distribution shown

Example: "social (sozial)" shows Position 3.37 in UI (all 741 respondents) but x̄ = 3.29 in the distribution plot (659 left-association respondents only).

Project Structure

├── app.R                 # Main application
├── R/
│   ├── mod_scatter_plot.R    # Main plot module
│   ├── mod_word_details.R    # Side panel module
│   ├── utils_plots.R         # Plot functions
│   └── utils_data.R          # Data loading
├── data/                 # CSV data files
└── www/custom.css        # Styling

Tech Stack

  • R Shiny with bslib (Bootstrap 5)
  • plotly for interactive scatter plot
  • ggplot2 for static plots
  • Deployed on shinyapps.io

Citation

Warode, L. (2025). Mapping left-right associations: a framework using
open-ended survey responses and political positions. Humanities and
Social Sciences Communications, 12:1318.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05679-x

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