Too broke for a bank account?

We have talked in this class about how mobile phones have brought banking to many who have never had that option before. However what about those people with access to banks, but without enough money to make having an account worthwhile. The fees that come with banking in the US make it difficult for some people to bank accounts. This article from nbcnews.com discusses this problem.

Big Data and Twitter Sentiment

I have been intrigued by Twitter for sometime. When the Library of Congress announced in 2010 that it would archive public tweets some scoffed, but I cheered. Sure there is a great deal of inane tweeting going on out there, but also this is a huge resource that could be a boon for numerous researchers. With this massive amount of data surely some trends, ideas, and conclusions can be reached on many subjects. It is all a matter of figuring how to do so. This is why the article we read in class "Sentiment in Twitter Events," (Thewall, Kevan, Paltoglou, 2010) really piqued my interest. The authors devised a study of a month of English Twitter posts to assess whether "popular events are typically associated with increase in sentiment strength." They found strong evidence that important events in Twitter are associated with increases in average negative sentiment strength. This is just one study that deals with a small cross section of data.

I was curious to find what tools are available  to assess the glut of Tweets. One that I found was Sentiment 140, which came out around the same time as this study. It can be used to "discover the sentiment of a brand, product, or topic. I search for "library" and it assessed Tweets for the last 3 minutes with library as a topic. The analysis for those 85 tweets were 55% negative and 45% positive. I could scroll through to read the Tweets that were analysed and I agreed with how it calculated positive v. negative. There are many, many more and Sentiment 140 provides a listing of many other similar sites.

So that might be interesting to see, but how can it be applied? I used to see how positively/negatively my employer (VCU) is viewed on Twitter. It provides an illuminating snapshot of user sentiment. However this type of tool can be employed on a much larger scale as was seen during the 2012 presidential election. The University of Southern California used Twitter to track in real time public sentiment leading up to the first presidential debate.

Not everyone is sold on the idea of tracking Twitter sentiment. In the article  "Why the trick to analyzing Twitter data is more data," that came out during the elections last fall, there are several reasons why Twitter may not be very effective in gauging public sentiment. While it does indeed offer a vast amount of data there are drawbacks including:

• It's a large sample size, but still just a fraction of the population.
• Even among internet users, Twitter skews toward a younger, more-connected demographic.
• Twitters undercounts total tweets when the system can’t make a link between tweets and a given event.
• The number of tweets per minute on any topic will naturally rise as Twitter’s user count rises.
• Tweeting may be a sign that someone is less engaged in an activity (e.g., watching a presidential debate) than someone watching intently.
• Sentiment analysis can be skewed by who’s tweeting about an issue (e.g., ardent supporters only, adversaries only, or the public at large)  From Carl Bialik, The Numbers Guy, WSJ

So while Twitter can be a great source of information on popular sentiment it cannot be used as the sole source of data. It must be analyzed in conjunction with other data sets in order to provide context.

The article does mention one area where Twitter might be a better tool for gauging sentiment and that is consumer  satisfaction. A Twitter user can quickly offer up their unvarnished opinion on goods and services. This takes much less time than telephone surveys and focus groups to gauge opinion and consumers are often more honest about their experience when limited to 140 characters. Many companies have created  Twitter feeds to address consumer complaints. I have vented my frustrations about Verizon on Twitter a few times. I did not get any satisfaction other than letting off some steam, but some consumers have found resolutions for their problems via a Twitter rant.

Sources:

Bachelor, Lisa. "Complain on Twitter for an instant response," The Guardian, 12 May 2012.

Bialik, Carl. "Timing Twitter," WSJ 28 Sept 2012.

Gross, Doug. "Library of Congress digs into 170 billion tweets." CNN, 7 Jan 2013.

Harris, Derrick, "Why the trick to analyzing Twitter data is more data," Gigaom, 2 Oct 2012.

Sentiment 140, http://help.sentiment140.com/home

"Ahead of Debate, USC Project Uses Twitter to Measure Political Sentiment." SocialTech.com, 3 Oct 2012