Understanding Commuter Sentiments from Tweets
2016
Typically, transport operators conduct surveys to evaluate their service performance.With the rise in social media and the abundance of information exchanged through twitter, it is now possible to obtain commuter feedback more rapidly and with a larger sample size.However, deciphering messages transmitted through tweets remains a serious challenge.This paper seeks to understand the sentiments of commuters from their tweet messages, in the aftermath of train service breakdowns in the underground MRT system in Singapore.The work examines tweets messages arising from 5 incidents of service breakdowns for 7 weeks from August 2013 to Oct 2013 and classifies them according to Shaver generic emotions, following which Emotion Scores are obtained.The sentiments are analyzed and the changes in sentiment scores observed prior to, during and after the service breakdown period and examined along with the extent and impact of the delays.