by Sentimenti Team | May 23, 2023 | Market research, Politics and Social
Politics, emotions and polls are closely intertwined. Politicians of parties vying for seats in the upcoming parliamentary elections are trying to reach potential voters through all available channels. They are, of course, also using social media for this purpose.
Emotions in tweets by leaders of political groups (anger and trust)
One of the channels that politicians use to convey their opinions, but also the substantive elements of their election programs, is Twitter. Individual posts on the Twitter accounts of the following politicians were analyzed for the period April 11 to May 10, 2023:
- Adrian Zandberg,
- Szymon Hołownia,
- Mateusz Morawiecki,
- Zbigniew Ziobro,
- Władysław Kosiniak – Kamysz,
- Robert Winnicki,
- Donald Tusk.
It was investigated what emotions they were and how they might be perceived by Twitter users. The analysis involved measuring the intensity of selected emotions of anger and trust. Individual analysis results were published periodically on our accounts: Twitter and Facebook.
The activity of politicians on Twitter varied, but most importantly, the intensity of anger and trust that their posts evoked varied. The chart below shows collectively the values of the average intensity of the indicated emotions over the entire period under study.
Only the entries of Mateusz Morawiecki and Donald Tusk evoked higher trust over anger. Close to balanced were the entries of Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, where anger and trust occurred at similar intensities. In the case of the remaining politicians, the emotion of anger far outweighed trust. We emphasize it was not the task of the analysis to assess the substantive content of the entries, but to measure the intensity of the emotions they evoked.
Emotions in leaders’ tweets vs. poll results
The results of polls are a product of both the substantive content of programs, speeches, publications, but also undoubtedly the emotions they evoke in the audience, i.e. potential voters. We asked ourselves whether it was possible to find a correlation between the emotions evoked by the tweets of political party leaders and the results of published polls. We based our research on surveys by the Institute for Market and Social Research IBRiS:
In the case of the United Right, the May 17, 2023 poll recorded a 1.5% drop in support compared to the April 11, 2023 results. During this period (which the poll covered), an increase in the intensity of anger with a concomitant decrease in trust was noted in the entries of the group’s leaders. The reason for this – as the results of measuring the intensity of anger and trust showed – may have been the tweets published on Zbigniew Ziobra’s account.
At the same time, the Civic Coalition recorded a nearly 2% increase in support. Whether and what impact Donald Tusk’s Twitter posts had on this situation is difficult to judge. However, it can be noted that the increase in poll support occurred in parallel with an increase in the intensity of emotions of trust in the statements published by the politician.
Looking at the emotions evoked by the tweets of Szymon Holownia and Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, one can ask the question – is it thanks to the latter’s balanced statements that the PL2050 + PSL bloc recorded a slight increase in support? The question is legitimate, since in Szymon Holownia’s tweets one can notice a significant disproportion in the saturation of emotions of anger and confidence.
In the case of the Confederation and Left support polls, it can be noted that one of the factors in the lack of growth (Left) and decline in support (Confederation) in the May 17, 2023 poll may also have been a decline in audience trust in the content published on Twitter by the leaders of these formations.
The emotions that parties and politicians arouse in voters are important
Observing the Polish political scene, it is hard to resist the impression that the “actors” on it use the simplest tools to influence the audience. So what if they can have the best political and social programs, etc. if they don’t know (after all, hardly anyone measures emotions):
- How to present your program, your vision in a way that inspires confidence,
- That one should control negative emotions (in this case, anger). Too strongly and too insistently politicians try to “play” on negative emotions.
Looking at the results of emotion analysis and survey results, we should conclude that it is worthwhile to study emotions, and just as worthwhile to bet on positive emotions. It is worth monitoring emotions in spontaneous statements, and not just conducting surveys, because in the latter the respondent thinks about his emotions, rather than expressing them.
Part of the political scene trusts Sentimenti. By commissioning it to conduct regular surveys, it seems to be doing well at it.
by Sentimenti Team | Feb 3, 2023 | Market research, Politics and Social
Disinformation – a word that appears in the public space every day. Russia almost every day conducts an intensive disinformation campaign against not only Ukraine, but also Poland and countries that help Ukraine, both militarily and humanitarian. Every day we face a séance of hostility, but above all a flood of lies about us.
Disinformation and pro-Russian narrative on X (formerly known as Twitter). What is being written about?
Analysts and specialists in disinformation and cybersecurity agree here. The purpose of the online campaign, which has been ongoing since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is primarily to provoke hostility and antagonize Ukrainians and Poles. With each month of the war in Ukraine, the scale of the attacks intensifies, and increasingly harsh accusations and threats are made against Poland.
According to Stanislaw Zharyn, who has recently been acting as the government’s plenipotentiary for the security of Poland’s information space, Russia is actively conducting a psychological operation against Poland and the West as a whole. The operation is aimed at intimidating and forcing submission to Russian imperialism.
Russian propaganda is constantly conducting online operations aimed also at intimidating Poles. On the Internet, all themes appearing in Russia’s popular propaganda programs are being expanded. We decided to check what kind of content is created by the most popular Twitter accounts known for sowing disinformation, fake news about the war and – generally speaking – for their love of Russia.
We selected the 5,000 most popular posts (with the highest number of accumulated interactions) posted to this channel from each of the months between January 2022 and January 2023, i.e. for a full 13 months. A total of 494 profiles were manually monitored. The data collected in this way was further examined for emotion and sentiment, and we further examined which threads and thematic contexts aroused extreme emotion and generated high emotional arousal.
Among the online personalities we surveyed are mostly anonymous accounts and profiles, which often make typical Russian mistakes. They are created in part by transferring Russian content to Poland using automated free translation programs. Unfortunately, more influential people are increasingly included, spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda as a whole.
Festival of fake news and disinformation brings results
The incentive and starting point for our analysis was an article that appeared on gazetaprawna.pl (Polish). As we read in the material, titled “The Russian propaganda. “Poles increasingly susceptible to Russian propaganda [SURVEY],” recently there has been a strong increase in the number of people who more or less consciously share the theses circulated on the web that are part of pro-Russian disinformation. The Warsaw Enterprise Institute conducted its survey in this regard.
The results of the aforementioned survey show the same thing we see in the data we collected. Contexts of Ukrainian refugees, who are referred to as economic migrants, appear regularly. Even more frequent references are made to history, namely Volhynia and Bandera. Propaganda penetrates from Russia to Poland without any barriers via social media, but not only.
Returning to the 494 X (formerly known as Twitter) profiles we took under our magnifying glass, one thing strikes the eye above all. This is the extremely high level of activity. Some of the Twitter accounts are active to such an extent that it raises serious doubts about whether there are actually people behind them.
The Polish Anti-War Movement and the disturbing results of public opinion polls
The content is mass-collected in such quantities (200 or more posts a day) that it is challenging to imagine that the people behind it have anything else going on in their lives. There are also accounts that can flood a social network with several thousand pieces of content in a month. As for month-on-month increases in activity, for some periods the activity even increased by more than 80%. The trend is also noticeable and unambiguous.
What can be seen in the chart is, of course, only a slice of what is actually happening online. The point, however, is that this type of activity brings tangible results to those who conduct such a campaign online (increasingly, they also conduct it offline, i.e., on the streets of Polish cities).
The conclusions of the WEI study, as reported in Gazeta Prawna, are clear. In September 2022 and January 2023, the survey was conducted on 1,061 Poles. A comparison of the collected information yielded grim conclusions. , In January this year, as many as 41 percent of respondents (previously it was 34 percent) “strongly agreed” or “tended to agree” with a minimum of four statements characteristic of the Russian narrative
The opinions of Poles in this survey are very consistent with what narrative is served to them online, among other things. For 63 percent, Poland cannot afford to take in refugees. 41 percent are also convinced that refugees from Ukraine are economic migrants. 30 percent of Poles believe that we should not help Ukraine unless they apologize for the difficult history of relations between Ukraine and Poland. The group of Poles who believe that Russia should not be teased because it is a nuclear superpower has increased to 40 percent.
Content colluded by pro-Russian profiles online. What kind of sentiment?
Pro-Kremlin propaganda is beginning to increasingly shape what is going on in the minds of Poles. Declining support for supporting Ukraine or welcoming Ukrainians fleeing the war is a phenomenon that is occurring in parallel with what is happening to our economy.
Poles are increasingly connecting the dots and believe that the war is to blame for the fact that we have less and less in our wallets. This thesis is also being used in the narratives being spread.
The chart below is an analysis of the content we’ve gathered from nearly 500 profiles that colportage constantly pro-Kremlin content on X (formerly known as Twitter). Sentiment averaged negative on a monthly basis throughout the period analyzed, which is not surprising
However, not much variation in sentiment was noted for the entire 13-month period under study. What is clear, however, is how the narrative changed after the start of the war in February 2022, and that there was a marked jump in negative intensity.
Contexts and topics covered by disinformation accounts
When it comes to the content of posts uploaded to the web, we checked the ones that carry the greatest emotional charge. It’s all about anger or revulsion. The following analysis is the result of this. The different colors denote groups of topics. The color black identifies political topics. The red color is in contexts related to the war in Ukraine and derivative topics such as the Volyn slaughter, genocide and the military.
The yellow color refers to issues related to refugees from Ukraine. Blue tinges the topics related to energy and climate policy and raw materials. We were also able to isolate issues related to coronavirus, which we marked in green.
The analysis shows perfectly what the analyzed profiles are colporting. We can see what the intensity is in terms of topics and what issues are being covered. These accounts produce intensely content hitting the Polish government. They are also spreading disinformation in the field of health care or pandemics. We also see the topic of Ukrainian refugees and the impact of their presence in Poland on our economic situation.
Russian trolls will be colporteurizing more and more such information in the near future, as indicated, for example, by the first chart in this article. Soon we should expect – in connection with the planned and long-announced spring offensive – more uploads, but with strictly military topics (including mobilization in Poland, which is not present).
One can expect a difficult time ahead. It will be difficult to distinguish truth from lies, but the goal is invariably the same – to divide Poles and Ukrainians, Putin’s strategic goal.
by Sentimenti Team | Nov 22, 2022 | Categorising comments, Market research, SentiBrand
As a strategic global partner of Statista®, we regularly study industries. We publish the results in the form of periodic reports or as requested by the client. They are of great interest among the surveyed companies, as well as their customers.
We have prepared a commercial report analyzing the intensity of emotions evoked among service users by the activities of Polish mobile operators in the period from January 2022.
What you will learn from the report:
- how my company compares to the competition,
- which services cause the most irritation and anger,
- which services your customers love,
- analysis of specific comments for each emotion.
Who was written about the most
The study examined more than 250,000 Polish-language comments and opinions found on the profiles of Play, Orange, T-Mobile, Plus, Nju Mobile, Lajt Mobile, Mobile Vikings and Virgin Mobile. They were posted on Facebook from January 2022.
For starters – the sentiment
The chart shows the differences in the intensity of negative sentiment, positive sentiment and emotional arousal of an operator compared to the other seven companies. In other words, for example, the negative sentiment around operator 1 was 52% higher than the average sentiment measured for the other seven operators combined.
In this presentation, operators’ data have been anonymized (full data are available in the commercial report).
Emotions are more important
The chart shows the differences in the intensities of the selected four emotions in the discussion on a given company’s profile compared to the other seven. That is, similar to sentiment, for example, the intensity of the emotion of anger measured for operator 1 was 39% higher than the average intensity of this emotion measured for the other seven operators combined.
In this presentation, operators’ data have been anonymized (full data are available in the commercial report).
What else you can find in the report
The analyses indicated above are only a small part of the report. It further includes:
- analysis of the total number of mentions,
- analysis of the average intensity of sentiment and arousal for each operator,
- analysis of the average intensity of basic emotions for each operator,
- an analysis of mentions broken down into operator comments and Internet user comments,
- analysis of sentiment and arousal for operator and Internet user comments,
- analysis of contexts and themes in opinion content by emotion (e.g., anger and joy), separately for each operator.
- the most prominent comments in terms of stimulated emotions.
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Use our information to improve communication with your customers and improve your service. We can update reports at any set period (even daily).
Our analysts will help you interpret the data so that you get the most out of the information that is important to you and your company…. Get back to us!
by Damian Grimling | Oct 7, 2022 | Sentistocks
Credit Suisse’s stock price has been on the decline for many months. Confusion over the bank’s financial condition is growing. There are further reports in the media about the potential insolvency of the institution, which is the second largest Swiss bank. Could its share price have been predicted? Yes – thanks to artificial intelligence.
Safe as a Swiss bank. Credit Suisse CDS price is a real trouble
Credit Suisse’s stock price has been on the decline for many months. As Sentimenti deals with, among other things, predicting the prices of financial instruments or cryptocurrencies, we decided to take a look at the atmosphere and mood on the web around Credit Suisse.
The analysis looked at the level of intensity of emotion and emotional arousal among authors of online opinions and comments, which were written in English and German. That’s a total of more than 40,000 mentions from May to September 2022, which our artificial intelligence looked at. The results are surprising.
It was not surprising to find a high level of intensity of emotions generally understood as negative emotions somewhat related to uncertainty (fear and sadness) or neutral emotions (surprise and anticipation). However, it was a big surprise to find an increasing level of intensity of emotions conceived as positive (trust and joy).
A detailed analysis of the content of the entries showed that the entries characterized by a high intensity of these favorable emotions are those expressing – generally speaking – satisfaction with Credit Suisse’s troubles. This state of affairs significantly affected the level of the correlation index of the intensity of emotions and the bank’s stock price.
The study of emotion diads (which form according to Pluchik’s theory) also leads to interesting observations, including showing how market attitudes changed. Thus, emotions correlated most strongly with Credit Suisse stock prices:
in May of expectation and trust – forming a diad of fatalism;
in June and July of fear and sadness – forming a diad of despair;
in August expectation and sadness – forming a diad of pessimism;
in September of expectation and disgust – forming a diad of cynicism.
Using Pearson correlation coefficient analysis, the interaction between stock prices and the intensity of emotion around Credit Suisse on the Internet was examined.
Credit Suisse problems. Are we in for a repeat of Lehman Brothers?
The analysis showed that there was a rare case where all emotions (including those considered positive) correlated negatively with Credit Suisse share prices. This meant that, in this case, a recorded increase in the intensity of emotions was linked to a decrease in share prices. In September, the strongest correlations with the share prices of Switzerland’s second largest bank were revulsion and expectation forming – according to Pluchik’s theory – a diad of cynicism.
A prototype stock price prediction model was fed for Credit Suisse with financial data (share prices) and data on the intensity of emotions, sentiment and emotional arousal around the company. A model built on an artificial neural network using BiLSTM (bidirectional long short-term memory) was used.
Using our predictive model (Sentistocks service), a success rate of up to 88% in predicting the trend of Credit Suisse’s share price over the period under study was achieved. This shows that potential investors could have successfully predicted the quotation solely on the basis of online discussions about the bank’s financial situation.
Investors remember the great collapse of Lehman Brothers. 14 years ago, it contributed to the outbreak of the global financial crisis. Will Credit Suisse face the same finale? We do not know. But the cost of CDS (insurance against bankruptcy) for the institution has approached the highest levels in almost 15 years. The bank itself foresees bumpy times ahead.
Credit Suisse CDS price. How emotions suggest the direction of a share price trend?
Sentistocks has developed effective predictive models for instruments in the cryptocurrency market. These models use both financial and emotive data to predict future prices (rates). The high success rate of the predictions developed with our tool confirms the huge role played by emotions in financial markets.
by Sentimenti Team | Sep 18, 2022 | Market research, SentiBrand
Analyzing sentiment in the comments and opinions that swarm social media helps uncover what is essential for marketing departments and beyond. It helps track business performance based on customer and product satisfaction information and manage brand reputation online.
Sentiment. Do online comments matter?
The skill is in knowing how to take advantage of customer reviews and comments, which are abundant online. However, it is difficult to extract the ones that are relevant from all the online chatter. Every day there is a whole lot of conversation on social media about services, companies and products.
Social media is a very important space in business development today. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to conduct market research by analyzing customer opinions, and on top of that, it is time-efficient. It allows you to engage with customers – both current and potential – in a valuable way.
This is essential in the process of branding and resolving any negative or sensitive issues as quickly as possible. When we analyze sentiment in social media comments, we get express insights into various aspects of the business that ultimately affect profits.
These include the pros and cons of a product or service, changing market preferences, after-sales service and many other parameters. Today, up to 70% of companies use insights and knowledge from social media reviews to formulate brand strategy, and more than 60% find sentiment analysis data in reviews extremely useful for effective ongoing customer service and sales.
Sentiment analysis is a stepping stone to customer experience analysis and is done through machine learning (ML) models. These include neural networks, natural language processing (NLP), thematic categorization and finally sentiment and emotion analysis.
What does the knowledge coming from the network allow?
Here are some of the most important ways for companies to use sentiment analysis on comments. These include extracting in-depth information about customers and products, discovering emerging market trends, making sales or increasing market share. These include:
- Monitoring overall customer satisfaction;
- Improving the customer experience;
- Getting real-time consumer insights;
- Identifying emotional triggers in customers;
- Improving products and services;
- Building brand loyalty;
- Reducing customer churn;
- Training customer service employees;
- Training chatbots;
- Managing brand reputation;
- Monitoring changes in sentiment over time;
- Improving marketing content published on social media;
- Gaining competitive intelligence;
- Preparing for changes in market trends.
Branding is the focal point of all marketing efforts when it comes to products and services, so studying its image is about understanding how it is perceived by those who use those products or services. It’s also a way to learn the opinions of those who value the competition more.
Branding is basically a psychological phenomena created and designed by marketing to influence consumer preferences and buying behavior. It is the face of a company and the outer shell that the world sees.
Sentiment analysis. Examine your image!
Sentiment analysis helps companies capture what their customers are really saying about them by analyzing the feedback consumers use to express their feelings and emotions in published reviews. Whether these sentiments are positive, neutral, or negative, in the digital age it is important to use this to align your business with market trends
Consumer opinions are essential to understanding a brand. Companies can learn from consumer opinions to improve customer experience and create or change operating strategies.
Sentiment analysis can help a company examine its brand by:
- Discovering what motivates customers and stimulates purchase intentions, or fosters dissatisfaction;
- assessing the impact of marketing campaigns and creative strategies on consumer perception;
- understanding consumer opinions on product price, quality, reliability, user experience, etc.; and
- benchmarking against competing products, services, and brands;
- analyzing and comparing different consumer segments and share of voice.
The three main ways consumers express their feelings and opinions about a brand? They are product reviews, consumer surveys and social media posts.
The challenge for marketers is to collect, analyze and summarize these myriad opinions. This must be done in such a way that their results are understandable and actionable.
Using both topic-based sentiment analysis and machine learning and artificial intelligence, Sentimenti can help analyze customer sentiment and opinions.
It doesn’t matter if it’s qualitative or quantitative research. An important part of branding is understanding what’s behind the content of comments. By doing so, you can gain deeper insights into the minds of consumers or prospective customers, and that’s another step to improving your offerings.
