Sentiment of tweets

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 Introduction

In today's digital age, social media platforms have become a significant source of information and
opinion sharing. Twitter, in particular, has emerged as a popular platform for users to express their
thoughts and sentiments publicly. Analyzing the sentiment of tweets can provide valuable insights into
public opinion and help businesses understand customer satisfaction, identify potential issues, and
improve their products or services accordingly.

The aim of this project is to develop a sentiment analysis model that can accurately classify the
sentiment of tweets. Sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, involves determining the
emotional tone or polarity of a given text. In this project, we focus on classifying tweets into three
sentiment categories: positive, neutral, and negative.

To accomplish this task, we will employ machine learning techniques and leverage a dataset comprising
14,640 observations from various airlines. Each observation consists of several features, including the
airline sentiment, sentiment confidence, and the text of the tweets. By analyzing these features, we can
gain valuable insights into customer perceptions and sentiments towards different airlines.

However, before training the classification model, we need to preprocess the raw text data. Text
preprocessing is a crucial step to reduce noise and transform the unstructured text into a format that is
more suitable for machine learning algorithms. We will perform various preprocessing steps such as
removing punctuation, special characters, links, and emojis, as these elements do not contribute directly
to the sentiment of the text. Additionally, we will remove numbers and stop words, and retain only
nouns and adjectives, as they carry the most meaning in determining sentiment.

After preprocessing the text data, we will encode it using the Term Frequency-Inverse Document
Frequency (TF-IDF) vectorization technique. TF-IDF calculates the relevance of each word in the context
of the entire dataset, allowing us to represent the text data as a numerical matrix. This encoding method
helps capture the relative importance of words with respect to the sentiment classification task.

With the encoded data prepared, we will split it into training and test sets to evaluate the performance
of our sentiment analysis models. However, we encounter a class imbalance issue, where negative
sentiments dominate the dataset. To address this problem, we will employ an upsampling technique
called Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) to artificially create data points for the
minority classes (neutral and positive sentiments). This approach allows us to balance the dataset
without discarding valuable data.

Next, we will train two different neural network models: a feed-forward network and a recurrent neural
network (RNN). The feed-forward network consists of an input layer, three fully connected layers, and
an output layer with sigmoid activation for multiclass sentiment classification. The RNN incorporates a
long-short term memory (LSTM) layer and a dropout layer to prevent overfitting. We will evaluate the
models' performance using the Categorical Cross Entropy loss function and the Area Under Curve (AUC)
metric to ensure sensitivity to all sentiments.

Surprisingly, both models demonstrate comparable performance, with the feed-forward network
achieving a training performance of 0.872 and the RNN achieving 0.839. Given the simplicity of the feed-
forward network, we choose it as our final model for sentiment analysis.
Further improvements can be explored, such as ensemble methods to combine the strengths of both
models. However, this may introduce complexity and potential issues with generalization. Additionally,
text normalization techniques can be implemented to further reduce the number of unique words and
enhance model generalizability.

Literature Review

Agarwal, A., Xie, B., Vovsha, I., Rambow, O., & Passonneau, R. (2011). "Sentiment Analysis of Twitter
Data."

In this paper, Agarwal et al. introduce POS-specific prior polarity features and explore the use of a tree
kernel for sentiment analysis on Twitter data. The authors demonstrate that these new features,
combined with previously proposed features, and the tree kernel perform at a comparable level,
outperforming the state-of-the-art baseline. Their work contributes to the understanding of feature
engineering and kernel-based approaches in sentiment analysis on social media data.

This study is relevant to this project as it provides insights into feature engineering techniques and
kernel-based approaches, which can be applied in our project to improve the performance of sentiment
analysis on Twitter data.

Kouloumpis, E., Wilson, T., & Moore, J. D. (2017). "Twitter Sentiment Analysis: The Good the Bad and
the OMG!"

This paper investigates the utility of linguistic features for sentiment analysis on Twitter messages. The
authors evaluate the usefulness of existing lexical resources and features that capture the informal and
creative language used in microblogging. Leveraging existing hashtags in the Twitter data, they build a
supervised approach to sentiment analysis. The study provides insights into the effectiveness of
linguistic features and the importance of considering the specific characteristics of microblogging
platforms for sentiment analysis.

This study contributes to this project by evaluating existing lexical resources and features capturing
informal and creative language in microblogging.It provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of
linguistic features. Leveraging existing hashtags for building training data is another contribution that
aligns with our project's focus on utilizing the unique characteristics of Twitter data for sentiment
analysis.

Pak, A., & Paroubek, P. (2010). "Twitter as a Corpus for Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining."

Pak and Paroubek focus on using Twitter as a corpus for sentiment analysis and opinion mining. They
demonstrate how to automatically collect a corpus for sentiment analysis purposes and perform
linguistic analysis to uncover relevant phenomena. The authors also build a sentiment classifier capable
of determining positive, negative, and neutral sentiments. Their proposed techniques show efficiency
and outperform previously proposed methods. This work emphasizes the potential of using Twitter as a
valuable resource for sentiment analysis and opinion mining tasks.
This study is highly relevant as it highlights the potential of Twitter as a valuable resource for sentiment
analysis. Their proposed techniques, which show improved performance compared to previous
methods, can inform our project's data collection and sentiment classification strategies.

Zhang, L., Wang, S., & Liu, B. (2018). "Deep Learning for Sentiment Analysis: A Survey."

This survey paper provides an overview of deep learning and its applications in sentiment analysis. The
authors discuss the emergence of deep learning as a powerful technique for learning representations
and features from data. They then comprehensively survey the current applications of deep learning in
sentiment analysis. This paper serves as a valuable resource for understanding the state-of-the-art deep
learning methods and their impact on sentiment analysis tasks.

As deep learning has shown promising results in various domains, including sentiment analysis, this
survey is relevant to our project. It offers an overview of deep learning techniques and their current
applications in sentiment analysis. By understanding the state-of-the-art deep learning methods, we can
assess their suitability and potential incorporation into our project to enhance sentiment analysis
accuracy and performance.

These articles contribute significantly to the understanding of sentiment analysis on Twitter data,
covering aspects such as feature engineering, kernel-based approaches, linguistic features, and the
application of deep learning techniques. They provide insights into the effectiveness of different
methodologies, highlight the challenges specific to social media platforms, and offer valuable guidance
for conducting sentiment analysis in various domains. The findings from these studies inform our project
by providing a foundation of knowledge and guiding the selection and implementation of appropriate
techniques and methodologies
 Design

Overview

The project aims to develop a sentiment analysis system for Twitter data. The system will analyze tweets
and classify them into positive, negative, or neutral sentiments. By leveraging natural language
processing techniques, machine learning algorithms, and deep learning models, the project aims to
provide valuable insights into the sentiment expressed on Twitter.

Template

For this project, we will be using a modular design template that allows for flexibility and scalability. The
modular design approach will enable us to easily integrate various components and algorithms required
for sentiment analysis.

Domain and Users

The project is targeted towards researchers, social media analysts, and businesses interested in
understanding public sentiment on Twitter. The domain of the project is social media analytics,
specifically focusing on sentiment analysis. By accurately identifying sentiments expressed in tweets, the
project will enable users to gain insights into public opinions, brand perception, and emerging trends.

Design Justification

The design choices are based on the needs of users and the requirements of the domain. The modular
design allows for easy integration of different sentiment analysis algorithms and techniques, facilitating
experimentation and customization. Additionally, the design prioritizes scalability to accommodate large
volumes of Twitter data and adapt to evolving user requirements.

Overall Structure

The project will follow a software architecture design, comprising data collection, preprocessing, feature
extraction, sentiment classification, and evaluation modules. The data collection module will retrieve
tweets using the Twitter API. Preprocessing will involve text cleaning, tokenization, and normalization.
Feature extraction will encompass techniques such as bag-of-words, word embeddings, and sentiment
lexicons. Sentiment classification will employ machine learning algorithms and deep learning models.
Evaluation will involve performance metrics and validation techniques.

Technologies and Methods

The project will utilize Python as the primary programming language due to its extensive libraries and
tools for natural language processing and machine learning. Key technologies include NLTK (Natural
Language Toolkit), scikit-learn, TensorFlow, and Keras for implementing various sentiment analysis
techniques and deep learning models. Additionally, the Twitter API will be utilized for data collection.

Work Plan

The work plan will be organized into major tasks and their corresponding timelines. This plan will be
visualized using a Gantt chart or a similar visual representation. Major tasks may include literature
review, data collection, preprocessing, feature extraction, model development, testing, and evaluation.
The timeline for each task will be defined to ensure a structured and timely completion of the project.

Testing and Evaluation Plan

The project will undergo rigorous testing and evaluation to assess its performance and accuracy. A test
dataset with manually annotated sentiments will be used to evaluate the sentiment classification model.
Performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score will be calculated. Additionally,
qualitative evaluation involving manual inspection of classified tweets will be conducted to assess the
system's effectiveness in capturing nuanced sentiments.

By following this comprehensive design, the project will aim to develop a robust sentiment analysis
system for Twitter data, catering to the needs of users in the social media analytics domain.
 References

Agarwal, A., Xie, B., Vovsha, I., Rambow, O., & Passonneau, R. (2011). Sentiment Analysis of

Twitter Data. Www.semanticscholar.org.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Sentiment-Analysis-of-Twitter-Data-Agarwal-

Xie/ffe0fa5f2ce6709ff6b1750f9bbc9e31929b25b2

Efthymios Kouloumpis, Wilson, T., & Moore, J. D. (2017). Twitter Sentiment Analysis: The

Good the Bad and the OMG! Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web

and Social Media. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Twitter-Sentiment-Analysis

%3A-The-Good-the-Bad-and-Kouloumpis-Wilson/

2139a684ba686ec6f7386ff4a0d6113e4e0b780b

Pak, A., & Paroubek, P. (2010). Twitter as a Corpus for Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining.

Semantic Scholar. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Twitter-as-a-Corpus-for-

Sentiment-Analysis-and-Pak-Paroubek/6b7fc158541d5a7be2b2465f7d8a42afa97d7ae9

Zhang, L., Wang, S., & Liu, B. (2018). Deep learning for sentiment analysis: A survey. Wiley

Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 8(4).

https://doi.org/10.1002/widm.1253