Hybrid sentiment and network analysis of social opinion polarization

The rapid growth of social media and user-generated contents (UGC) has provided a rich source of potentially relevant data. The problems arise on how to summarize those data to understand and transforming it into information. Twitter as one of the most popular social networking and micro-blogging service can be analyzed in terms of content produced with sentiment analysis. On the other hand, some types of networks can also be constructed to analyze the social network structure and network properties. This research intended to combine those content and structural approaches into hybrid approach for identifies social opinion polarization, this is in the form of conversation network. Sentiment analysis used to determine public sentiment, and social network analysis used to analyze the structure of the network, detecting communities and influential actors in the network. Using this hybrid approach, we have comprehensive understanding about social opinion polarization. As case study, we present real social opinion polarization about reclamation issue in Indonesia.

I. Introduction

The rapid growth of social media and user-generated contents (UGC) has provided a rich source of potentially relevant data. Social media has changed the way of dissemination of information. Social media allows internet users become contributors and active disseminators of information. The existence of social media has given a new way to effectively spread information and even in real-time.