Semantic Clustering of Civic Proposals: A Case Study on Brazil's National Participation Platform

Ronivaldo Ferreira; Guilherme da Silva; Carla Rocha; Gustavo Pinto

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arXiv · 2509.21292

Semantic Clustering of Civic Proposals: A Case Study on Brazil's National Participation Platform

Ronivaldo Ferreira·Guilherme da Silva·Carla Rocha·Gustavo Pinto

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Abstract

Promoting participation on digital platforms such as Brasil Participativo has emerged as a top priority for governments worldwide. However, due to the sheer volume of contributions, much of this engagement goes underutilized, as organizing it presents significant challenges: (1) manual classification is unfeasible at scale; (2) expert involvement is required; and (3) alignment with official taxonomies is necessary. In this paper, we introduce an approach that combines BERTopic with seed words and automatic validation by large language models. Initial results indicate that the generated topics are coherent and institutionally aligned, with minimal human effort. This methodology enables governments to transform large volumes of citizen input into actionable data for public policy.

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Ronivaldo Ferreira, Guilherme da Silva, Carla Rocha, Gustavo Pinto. 2025-09-25. Semantic Clustering of Civic Proposals: A Case Study on Brazil's National Participation Platform. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21292

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