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Article
Publication date: 14 January 2019

Tracy Tuten and Victor Perotti

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the influence of media coverage and sentiment about brands on user-generated content amplification and opinions expressed in social media

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the influence of media coverage and sentiment about brands on user-generated content amplification and opinions expressed in social media.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used a mixed-method approach, using a brand situation as a case example, including sentiment analysis of social media conversations and sentiment analysis of media coverage. This study tracks the diffusion of a false claim about the brand via online media coverage, subsequent spreading of the false claim via social media and the resulting impact on sentiment toward the brand.

Findings

The findings illustrate the influence of digital mass communication sources on the subsequent spread of information about a brand via social media channels and the impact of the social spread of false claims on brand sentiment. This study illustrates the value of social media listening and sentiment analysis for brands as an ongoing business practice.

Research limitations/implications

While it has long been known that media coverage is in part subsequently diffused through individual sharing, this study reveals the potential for media sentiment to influence sentiment toward a brand. It also illustrates the potential harm brands face when false information is spread via media coverage and subsequently through social media posts and conversations. How brands can most effectively correct false brand beliefs and recover from negative sentiment related to false claims is an area for future research.

Practical implications

This study suggests that brands are wise to use sentiment analysis as part of their evaluation of earned media coverage from news organizations and to use social listening as an alert system and sentiment analysis to assess impact on attitudes toward the brand. These steps should become part of a brand’s social media management process.

Social implications

Media are presumed to be impartial reporters of news and information. However, this study illustrated that the sentiment expressed in media coverage about a brand can be measured and diffused beyond the publications’ initial reach via social media. Advertising positioned as news must be labeled as “advertorial” to ensure that those exposed to the message understand that the message is not impartial. News organizations may inadvertently publish false claims and relay information with sentiment that is then carried via social media along with the information itself. Negative information about a brand may be more sensational and, thus, prone to social sharing, no matter how well the findings are researched or sourced.

Originality/value

The value of the study is its illustration of how false information and media sentiment spread via social media can ultimately affect consumer sentiment and attitude toward the brand. This study also explains the research process for social scraping and sentiment analysis.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 22 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 February 2021

Shrawan Kumar Trivedi and Amrinder Singh

There is a strong need for companies to monitor customer-generated content of social media, not only about themselves but also about competitors, to deal with competition and to…

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Abstract

Purpose

There is a strong need for companies to monitor customer-generated content of social media, not only about themselves but also about competitors, to deal with competition and to assess competitive environment of the business. The purpose of this paper is to help companies with social media competitive analysis and transformation of social media data into knowledge creation for decision-makers, specifically for app-based food delivery companies.

Design/methodology/approach

Three online app-based food delivery companies, i.e. Swiggy, Zomato and UberEats, were considered in this study. Twitter was used as the data collection platform where customer’s tweets related to all three companies are fetched using R-Studio and Lexicon-based sentiment analysis method is applied on the tweets fetched for the companies. A descriptive analytical method is used to compute the score of different sentiments. A negative and positive sentiment word list is created to match the word present on the tweets and based on the matching positive, negative and neutral sentiments score are decided. The sentiment analysis is a best method to analyze consumer’s text sentiment. Lexicon-based sentiment classification is always preferable than machine learning or other model because it gives flexibility to make your own sentiment dictionary to classify emotions. To perform tweets sentiment analysis, lexicon-based classification method and text mining were performed on R-Studio platform.

Findings

Results suggest that Zomato (26% positive sentiments) has received more positive sentiments as compared to the other two companies (25% positive sentiments for Swiggy and 24% positive sentiments for UberEats). Negative sentiments for the Zomato was also low (12% negative sentiments) compared to Swiggy and UberEats (13% negative sentiments for both). Further, based on negative sentiments concerning all the three food delivery companies, tweets were analyzed and recommendations for business provided.

Research limitations/implications

The results of this study reveal the value of social media competitive analysis and show the power of text mining and sentiment analysis in extracting business value and competitive advantage. Suggestions, business and research implications are also provided to help companies in developing a social media competitive analysis strategy.

Originality/value

Twitter analysis of food-based companies has been performed.

Details

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, vol. 70 no. 8/9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9342

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 January 2024

Bülent Doğan, Yavuz Selim Balcioglu and Meral Elçi

This study aims to elucidate the dynamics of social media discourse during global health events, specifically investigating how users across different platforms perceive, react to…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to elucidate the dynamics of social media discourse during global health events, specifically investigating how users across different platforms perceive, react to and engage with information concerning such crises.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed-method approach was employed, combining both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Initially, thematic analysis was applied to a data set of social media posts across four major platforms over a 12-month period. This was followed by sentiment analysis to discern the predominant emotions embedded within these communications. Statistical tools were used to validate findings, ensuring robustness in the results.

Findings

The results showcased discernible thematic and emotional disparities across platforms. While some platforms leaned toward factual information dissemination, others were rife with user sentiments, anecdotes and personal experiences. Overall, a global sense of concern was evident, but the ways in which this concern manifested varied significantly between platforms.

Research limitations/implications

The primary limitation is the potential non-representativeness of the sample, as only four major social media platforms were considered. Future studies might expand the scope to include emerging platforms or non-English language platforms. Additionally, the rapidly evolving nature of social media discourse implies that findings might be time-bound, necessitating periodic follow-up studies.

Practical implications

Understanding the nature of discourse on various platforms can guide health organizations, policymakers and communicators in tailoring their messages. Recognizing where factual information is required, versus where sentiment and personal stories resonate, can enhance the efficacy of public health communication strategies.

Social implications

The study underscores the societal reliance on social media for information during crises. Recognizing the different ways in which communities engage with, and are influenced by, platform-specific discourse can help in fostering a more informed and empathetic society, better equipped to handle global challenges.

Originality/value

This research is among the first to offer a comprehensive, cross-platform analysis of social media discourse during a global health event. By comparing user engagement across platforms, it provides unique insights into the multifaceted nature of public sentiment and information dissemination during crises.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 May 2021

Xin Tian, Wu He and Feng-Kwei Wang

In recent years, social media crises occurred more and more often, which negatively affect the reputations of individuals, businesses and communities. During each crisis, numerous…

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Abstract

Purpose

In recent years, social media crises occurred more and more often, which negatively affect the reputations of individuals, businesses and communities. During each crisis, numerous users either participated in online discussion or widely spread crisis-related information to their friends and followers on social media. By applying sentiment analysis to study a social media crisis of airline carriers, the purpose of this research is to help companies take measure against social media crises.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used sentiment analytics to examine a social media crisis related to airline carriers. The arousal, valence, negative, positive and eight emotional sentiments were applied to analyze social media data collected from Twitter.

Findings

This research study found that social media sentiment analysis is useful to monitor public reaction after a social media crisis arises. The sentiment results are able to reflect the development of social media crises quite well. Proper and timely response strategies to a crisis can mitigate the crisis through effective communication with the customers and the public.

Originality/value

This study used the Affective Norms of English Words (ANEW) dictionary to classify the words in social media data and assigned the words with two elements to measure the emotions: valence and arousal. The intensity of the sentiment determines the public reaction to a social media crisis. An opinion-oriented information system is proposed as a solution for resolving a social media crisis in the paper.

Details

Data Technologies and Applications, vol. 56 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9288

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 September 2019

Collins Udanor and Chinatu C. Anyanwu

Hate speech in recent times has become a troubling development. It has different meanings to different people in different cultures. The anonymity and ubiquity of the social media

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Abstract

Purpose

Hate speech in recent times has become a troubling development. It has different meanings to different people in different cultures. The anonymity and ubiquity of the social media provides a breeding ground for hate speech and makes combating it seems like a lost battle. However, what may constitute a hate speech in a cultural or religious neutral society may not be perceived as such in a polarized multi-cultural and multi-religious society like Nigeria. Defining hate speech, therefore, may be contextual. Hate speech in Nigeria may be perceived along ethnic, religious and political boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to check for the presence of hate speech in social media platforms like Twitter, and to what degree is hate speech permissible, if available? It also intends to find out what monitoring mechanisms the social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have put in place to combat hate speech. Lexalytics is a term coined by the authors from the words lexical analytics for the purpose of opinion mining unstructured texts like tweets.

Design/methodology/approach

This research developed a Python software called polarized opinions sentiment analyzer (POSA), adopting an ego social network analytics technique in which an individual’s behavior is mined and described. POSA uses a customized Python N-Gram dictionary of local context-based terms that may be considered as hate terms. It then applied the Twitter API to stream tweets from popular and trending Nigerian Twitter handles in politics, ethnicity, religion, social activism, racism, etc., and filtered the tweets against the custom dictionary using unsupervised classification of the texts as either positive or negative sentiments. The outcome is visualized using tables, pie charts and word clouds. A similar implementation was also carried out using R-Studio codes and both results are compared and a t-test was applied to determine if there was a significant difference in the results. The research methodology can be classified as both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative in terms of data classification, and quantitative in terms of being able to identify the results as either negative or positive from the computation of text to vector.

Findings

The findings from two sets of experiments on POSA and R are as follows: in the first experiment, the POSA software found that the Twitter handles analyzed contained between 33 and 55 percent hate contents, while the R results show hate contents ranging from 38 to 62 percent. Performing a t-test on both positive and negative scores for both POSA and R-studio, results reveal p-values of 0.389 and 0.289, respectively, on an α value of 0.05, implying that there is no significant difference in the results from POSA and R. During the second experiment performed on 11 local handles with 1,207 tweets, the authors deduce as follows: that the percentage of hate contents classified by POSA is 40 percent, while the percentage of hate contents classified by R is 51 percent. That the accuracy of hate speech classification predicted by POSA is 87 percent, while free speech is 86 percent. And the accuracy of hate speech classification predicted by R is 65 percent, while free speech is 74 percent. This study reveals that neither Twitter nor Facebook has an automated monitoring system for hate speech, and no benchmark is set to decide the level of hate contents allowed in a text. The monitoring is rather done by humans whose assessment is usually subjective and sometimes inconsistent.

Research limitations/implications

This study establishes the fact that hate speech is on the increase on social media. It also shows that hate mongers can actually be pinned down, with the contents of their messages. The POSA system can be used as a plug-in by Twitter to detect and stop hate speech on its platform. The study was limited to public Twitter handles only. N-grams are effective features for word-sense disambiguation, but when using N-grams, the feature vector could take on enormous proportions and in turn increasing sparsity of the feature vectors.

Practical implications

The findings of this study show that if urgent measures are not taken to combat hate speech there could be dare consequences, especially in highly polarized societies that are always heated up along religious and ethnic sentiments. On daily basis tempers are flaring in the social media over comments made by participants. This study has also demonstrated that it is possible to implement a technology that can track and terminate hate speech in a micro-blog like Twitter. This can also be extended to other social media platforms.

Social implications

This study will help to promote a more positive society, ensuring the social media is positively utilized to the benefit of mankind.

Originality/value

The findings can be used by social media companies to monitor user behaviors, and pin hate crimes to specific persons. Governments and law enforcement bodies can also use the POSA application to track down hate peddlers.

Details

Data Technologies and Applications, vol. 53 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9288

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Hui Yuan, Yuanyuan Tang, Wei Xu and Raymond Yiu Keung Lau

Despite the extensive academic interest in social media sentiment for financial fields, multimodal data in the stock market has been neglected. The purpose of this paper is to…

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Abstract

Purpose

Despite the extensive academic interest in social media sentiment for financial fields, multimodal data in the stock market has been neglected. The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of multimodal social media data on stock performance, and investigate the underlying mechanism of two forms of social media data, i.e. text and pictures.

Design/methodology/approach

This research employs panel vector autoregressive models to quantify the effect of the sentiment derived from two modalities in social media, i.e. text information and picture information. Through the models, the authors examine the short-term and long-term associations between social media sentiment and stock performance, measured by three metrics. Specifically, the authors design an enhanced sentiment analysis method, integrating random walk and word embeddings through Global Vectors for Word Representation (GloVe), to construct a domain-specific lexicon and apply it to textual sentiment analysis. Secondly, the authors exploit a deep learning framework based on convolutional neural networks to analyze the sentiment in picture data.

Findings

The empirical results derived from vector autoregressive models reveal that both measures of the sentiment extracted from textual information and pictorial information in social media are significant leading indicators of stock performance. Moreover, pictorial information and textual information have similar relationships with stock performance.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that incorporates multimodal social media data for sentiment analysis, which is valuable in understanding pictures of social media data. The study offers significant implications for researchers and practitioners. This research informs researchers on the attention of multimodal social media data. The study’s findings provide some managerial recommendations, e.g. watching not only words but also pictures in social media.

Details

Internet Research, vol. 31 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1066-2243

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2022

Gang Yao, Xiaojian Hu, Liangcheng Xu and Zhening Wu

Social media data from financial websites contain information related to enterprise credit risk. Mining valuable new features in social media data helps to improve prediction…

Abstract

Purpose

Social media data from financial websites contain information related to enterprise credit risk. Mining valuable new features in social media data helps to improve prediction performance. This paper proposes a credit risk prediction framework that integrates social media information to improve listed enterprise credit risk prediction in the supply chain.

Design/methodology/approach

The prediction framework includes four stages. First, social media information is obtained through web crawler technology. Second, text sentiment in social media information is mined through natural language processing. Third, text sentiment features are constructed. Finally, the new features are integrated with traditional features as input for models for credit risk prediction. This paper takes Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises as an example to test the prediction framework and obtain relevant management enlightenment.

Findings

The prediction framework can improve enterprise credit risk prediction performance. The prediction performance of text sentiment features in social media data is better than that of most traditional features. The time-weighted text sentiment feature has the best prediction performance in mining social media information.

Practical implications

The prediction framework is helpful for the credit decision-making of credit departments and the policy regulation of regulatory departments and is conducive to the sustainable development of enterprises.

Originality/value

The prediction framework can effectively mine social media information and obtain an excellent prediction effect of listed enterprise credit risk in the supply chain.

Article
Publication date: 8 February 2016

Yoosin Kim, Rahul Dwivedi, Jie Zhang and Seung Ryul Jeong

The purpose of this paper is to mine competitive intelligence in social media to find the market insight by comparing consumer opinions and sales performance of a business and one…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to mine competitive intelligence in social media to find the market insight by comparing consumer opinions and sales performance of a business and one of its competitors by analyzing the public social media data.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory test using a multiple case study approach was used to compare two competing smartphone manufacturers. Opinion mining and sentiment analysis are conducted first, followed by further validation of results using statistical analysis. A total of 229,948 tweets mentioning the iPhone6 or the GalaxyS5 have been collected for four months following the release of the iPhone6; these have been analyzed using natural language processing, lexicon-based sentiment analysis, and purchase intention classification.

Findings

The analysis showed that social media data contain competitive intelligence. The volume of tweets revealed a significant gap between the market leader and one follower; the purchase intention data also reflected this gap, but to a less pronounced extent. In addition, the authors assessed whether social opinion could explain the sales performance gap between the competitors, and found that the social opinion gap was similar to the shipment gap.

Research limitations/implications

This study compared the social media opinion and the shipment gap between two rival smart phones. A business can take the consumers’ opinions toward not only its own product but also toward the product of competitors through social media analytics. Furthermore, the business can predict market sales performance and estimate the gap with competing products. As a result, decision makers can adjust the market strategy rapidly and compensate the weakness contrasting with the rivals as well.

Originality/value

This paper’s main contribution is to demonstrat the competitive intelligence via the consumer opinion mining of social media data. Researchers, business analysts, and practitioners can adopt this method of social media analysis to achieve their objectives and to implement practical procedures for data collection, spam elimination, machine learning classification, sentiment analysis, feature categorization, and result visualization.

Details

Online Information Review, vol. 40 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1468-4527

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 October 2022

Tianjie Deng, Anamika Barman-Adhikari, Young Jin Lee, Rinku Dewri and Kimberly Bender

This study investigates associations between Facebook (FB) conversations and self-reports of substance use among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH). YEH engage in high rates of…

Abstract

Purpose

This study investigates associations between Facebook (FB) conversations and self-reports of substance use among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH). YEH engage in high rates of substance use and are often difficult to reach, for both research and interventions. Social media sites provide rich digital trace data for observing the social context of YEH's health behaviors. The authors aim to investigate the feasibility of using these big data and text mining techniques as a supplement to self-report surveys in detecting and understanding YEH attitudes and engagement in substance use.

Design/methodology/approach

Participants took a self-report survey in addition to providing consent for researchers to download their Facebook feed data retrospectively. The authors collected survey responses from 92 participants and retrieved 33,204 textual Facebook conversations. The authors performed text mining analysis and statistical analysis including ANOVA and logistic regression to examine the relationship between YEH's Facebook conversations and their substance use.

Findings

Facebook posts of YEH have a moderately positive sentiment. YEH substance users and non-users differed in their Facebook posts regarding: (1) overall sentiment and (2) topics discussed. Logistic regressions show that more positive sentiment in a respondent's FB conversation suggests a lower likelihood of marijuana usage. On the other hand, discussing money-related topics in the conversation increases YEH's likelihood of marijuana use.

Originality/value

Digital trace data on social media sites represent a vast source of ecological data. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using such data from a hard-to-reach population to gain unique insights into YEH's health behaviors. The authors provide a text-mining-based toolkit for analyzing social media data for interpretation by experts from a variety of domains.

Details

Information Technology & People, vol. 36 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-3845

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 November 2019

Xin Tian, Wu He, Chuanyi Tang, Ling Li, Hangjun Xu and David Selover

Research on how to use social media data to measure and evaluate service quality is still limited. To fill the research gap in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to open…

1922

Abstract

Purpose

Research on how to use social media data to measure and evaluate service quality is still limited. To fill the research gap in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to open a new avenue for future work to measure the service quality in the service industry by developing a new analytical approach of using social media analytics to evaluate service quality.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses social media data to measure the service quality of the airline industry with the SERVQUAL metrics. A novel benchmark data set was created for each SERVQUAL metric. The data set was analyzed through text mining and sentiment analysis.

Findings

By comparing the results from social media with official service quality report from the Department of Transportation, the authors found that the proposed service quality metrics from social media are valid and can be used to estimate the service quality.

Practical implications

This paper presents service quality metrics and a methodology that can be easily adopted by other businesses to assess service quality. This study also provides guidance and suggestions to help businesses understand how to collect and analyze social media data for the purpose of evaluating service quality.

Originality/value

This paper offers a novel methodology that uses text mining and sentiment analysis to help the airline industry assess its service quality.

Details

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 33 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0398

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 13000