The disclosed embodiments provide a system for processing data. During operation, the system obtains a set of topics associated with a set of content items. Next, the system obtains a first set of attributes associated with a first topic in the set of topics and a second set of attributes associated with a second topic in the set of topics. Next, the system calculates a similarity between the first and second sets of attributes and applies a threshold to the similarity to identify the first and second topics as synonymous when the similarity exceeds a threshold. The system then merges the first and second topics under a representative topic. Finally, the system displays the representative topic to a user to improve understanding of the set of content items by the user without requiring the user to manually analyze the set of content items.