Sentiment Analysis

Findings

• The primary conclusion is that the sentiment analysis of the texts indicates a fairly high number of positive tweets being posted by members of the public as part of their engagement with Shakespeare Lives. The strength of the sentiment (either positive or negative) can be a result either of the original text of the post, or through the use of a chosen quotation.
• Sentiment analysis can be a useful tool for identifying some of the most popular topics. Many of the examples in this section have shown tweets with a very positive message being associated with the #ShakespeareLives tag. This demonstrates a level of engagement, and willingness to associate positive user-generated content with the campaign.
• Sentiment analysis is an imperfect science, and in particular, when unusual language is used, such as in Shakespeare’s quotes, it is not unusual for the automated systems to be misled about the intention of the text. This is typical in text analytics tasks, and needs to be taken into account when drawing final conclusions.
• As with all the investigations into Shakespeare Lives, celebrities such as actors form a big part of how people engage with the different aspects of the campaign. This can be the case both for official images (such as that of David Tennant above) or for user-generated content (such as that of Helen Mirren). The ability to be seen engaging with a well known personality seems to provide an impetus for engaging.