Sentiment Analysis

This book discusses three important, hot research issues: social networking-based learning, machine learning-based user modeling and sentiment analysis. Although these three technologies have been widely used by researchers around the globe by academic disciplines and by R&D departments in the IT industry, they have not yet been used extensively for the purposes of education.

Sentiment analysis is the computational study of people's opinions, sentiments, emotions, and attitudes. This fascinating problem is increasingly important in business and society. It offers numerous research challenges but promises insight useful to anyone interested in opinion analysis and social media analysis.

This volume maps the watershed areas between two 'holy grails' of computer science: the identification and interpretation of affect – including sentiment and mood. The expression of sentiment and mood involves the use of metaphors, especially in emotive situations. Affect computing is rooted in hermeneutics, philosophy, political science and sociology, and is now a key area of research in computer science. The 24/7 news sites and blogs facilitate the expression and shaping of opinion locally and globally. Sentiment analysis, based on text and data mining, is being used in the looking at news and blogs for purposes as diverse as: brand management, film reviews, financial market analysis and prediction, homeland security. There are systems that learn how sentiments are articulated.