A great example of what sentiment analysis can do with social media →
The “Twitter Political Index,” launched Wednesday by Twitter, tracks enthusiasm levels for President Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney based on an average of 2 million tweets a week that mention the candidates. Via USA Today
Whether or not your library has a Twitter account, guaranteed your students are talking about you. So are they saying positive or negative things? My wish list includes coming up with a quick and dirty DIY way to do sentiment analysis on posts related to us. Some are clearly negative, e.g. the recent “It smells like straight up cat food near the circulation desk in [redacted] #wwoww”. Others harder to score: “That awkward moment when I’m wandering aimlessly through [redacted] and people notice.” This is one of those things where the ROI for an academic library probably wouldn’t justify shelling out the clams for an expensive analytics program that helps you do sentiment analysis.
