Role of Emoticons for Multidimensional Sentiment Analysis of Twitter
Y. Yamamoto, Tadahiko Kumamoto, Akiyo Nadamoto · 2014
Microblogging systems such as Twitter and Facebook have become popular. People can easily post their sentiments to the Internet in real time using such microblogging systems. Twitter is a text-based communication tool. Users cannot use non-verbal communication tools such as gestures and eye contact on Twitter. Users sometimes use emoticons as an alternative non-verbal communication tool to tweet delicate sentiments. In this paper, we propose a method of determining sentiment of a tweet based on the emoticon role. Specifically, we propose the following: (1) compilation of a sentiment lexicon and an emoticon lexicon; (2) emoticon roles can be classified into four types showing "Emphasis", "Assuagement", "Conversion", and "Addition", with roles determined based on a relation between sentiments of sentences and emoticons; and (3) the relation can be formalized using regression analysis in all roles excepting for "Addition".