About this site
MLA Culture Wars is an independent public data project. It is part of nidata.fyi, a family of sites that make Northern Ireland public data easier to use.
This is not an official website. It is not run by, funded by or affiliated with the Northern Ireland Assembly, any MLA or any political party. The official record of its proceedings is published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
What it does
The site imports the Assembly’s published record for the current mandate — questions, Official Report contributions, motions and votes — and uses an AI model, Jev, to assess each Assembly activity against published criteria for culture-war activity. It then shows, for every current MLA and party, how many of their activities qualified, adjusted for how long they have served, with every figure linked to the records behind it.
The name is a little tongue-in-cheek; the method is not. The criteria, thresholds, model versions and every individual assessment are published so that anyone can check them, and any classification can be challenged.
Impartiality
The same questions and thresholds are applied to every record, every MLA and every party. The model is not told who made a contribution or which party they belong to. The site takes no position on the constitutional question or any policy issue, and a high or low figure is not an endorsement or criticism of any party’s politics. It measures one thing: the use of Assembly business to promote, exploit or escalate identity-based controversy.
Where the information comes from
- Assembly records and MLA details: Northern Ireland Assembly Open Data. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
- MLA photographs: Northern Ireland Assembly.
- Classifications: generated by the
typesafe/jevmodel on Cloudflare Workers AI, against the published criteria. They are assessments, not facts.
Always check the NI Assembly website for the official record.
Who made it
Made by Adam McBride of Dynumo, as part of the nidata.fyi project. Related projects include the Assembly question trackers such as Asked by Sian.
Contact and corrections
To report a mistake or challenge a classification, use the corrections form. For anything else, email adam@dynumo.co.uk.