Ontology Summit 2025 Track 3

Agenda

Andrea Westerinen - Narratives to Gain Situational Awareness via Ontologies
Abstract: This presentation introduces an ontology to describe how we conceptualize and communicate about situations in the real-world - the events, entities and relationships that exist. Building on ontological semantics, we propose a mapping from narratives (descriptions of the real-world) to propositional statements (triples), where the truth values of the propositions depend on objective reality but filtered by the subjective and intersubjective interpretations and goals of the narrator. Inspired by Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm, we highlight the universality of storytelling as a means for humans to organize, interpret, and communicate experience. To model and compare narrative structures, we present an ontology that captures the who, what, where, when, why, and how within narratives. This enables systematic exploration of narratives' sources, sentiments, use of language and much more. And, this exploration can occur across multiple narratives and across time. Using an ontology provides conceptual clarity and minimizes ambiguity. The approach enables comparison of the topics, entities and actions discussed and how the narrative is structured and conveyed in order to appeal and engage the reader/listener.
Slides

Date: Wednesday, 26 Mar 2025
Start Time: 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT / 5:00pm CET / 4:00pm GMT / 1600 UTC
- ref: World Clock
- Note: The US and Canada are on Daylight Saving Time while Europe has not yet changed.
Expected Call Duration: 1 hour
Video Conference URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88593616861?pwd=HafnK0yB7PFDK1EyiUyQRDKanZlbjU.1
- Conference ID: 885 9361 6861
- Passcode: 306236