by Sentimenti Team | Aug 21, 2024 | Politics and Social
On Platform X, The New York Times (NYT) has swept the post: „Donald Trump has boasted that, if he returns to office, he will dispatch forces to patrol the border, suppress protests and fight crime. His vision of using the military to enforce the law domestically would carry profound implications for civil liberties.”
Let’s take a look at the emotion in the comments under this post:
Sentiment in reader comments
We investigated what sentiment this post triggered in the audience – users of Platform X. For this purpose, we analyzed the comments posted under the NYT entry. In addition to the quantitative structure, we measured the intensity level of the sentiment expressed in the comments. The average intensity of negative sentiment was significantly higher than the average intensity of positive sentiment.
This simple measurement, however, does not answer the fundamental question: what did the readers-consumers of the NYT specifically feel when they read the posted entry. What emotion did the text evoke in them and does it matter in the evaluation. Only an in-depth analysis conducted in terms of measuring individual emotions provides an answer to such a question.
Dominant emotions in reader comments
The emotions we can measure include anger, fear, anticipation, surprise, trust, sadness, disgust, or joy. They are both components of positive or negative sentiment. Therefore, only the measurement of their intensity shows what we can expect from the behavior of their “owners.” After all, we react dramatically differently when we feel sadness (withdrawal) and when we feel anger (action). By merely concluding that negative sentiment prevails, we can infer very little. But to the point:
In the case studied, the dominant influence on the level of intensity of positive sentiment was the emotion of anticipation. Its intensity varied depending on the content of the comment and ranged from 10% to 58%.
In the case of negative sentiment – its level was decisively influenced by the emotion of anger expressed in the comments. Its intensity, as in the case of expectation, varied, ranging from 14% to 87%.
As can be seen from these measurements, the intensity of anger was stronger than the intensity of expectation in all cross-sections, and this built the overall negative perception of the information contained in the NYT entry.
Arousal – a measure of the involvement of comment authors
In addition to analyzing sentiment and the individual emotions that make it up, arousal was also measured, which was saturated with the content of readers’ comments. Stimulation most simply shows the level of engagement with which content authors express themselves. In this case, the average intensity of arousal remained very high reaching 59%.
In the case of arousal, too, there is a wide variation – a reflection of the commitment with which the individual author of the commentary expressed himself. The range of arousal intensity was from 42% to 83%. This, as well as the average intensity value, shows that the NYT entry triggered the need for readers to respond saturated with a very high layer of engagement.
Conclusion
Measuring sentiment alone is not enough to conclude how the author or authors will behave. Anger, present in the comments analyzed, suggests a strong commitment for the commenters, even indicating a desire to change the situation, an impulse to action triggered by the message. If, on the other hand, the dominant emotion was sadness, also seen in the category of negative sentiment. The conclusions could be quite different – indicating withdrawal of the majority of commenters, resignation and reluctant but acceptance of the state of affairs.
From an analysis of sentiment alone, all this will not be deduced and, most importantly, we will not learn about the future intentions of the recipient, reader or commenter, measuring only his mood, without going deeper, into emotions.
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 | Mar 18, 2022 | SentiBrand
Customer service is not only about everyday relationships and contacts with the recipient of our products and services. It is also about constantly analyzing their needs, desires and finding ways to satisfy them. Due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of companies had to work remotely, which made identifying customer needs quite a challenge.
Customer service. Promotional tools that must be used
The COVID-19 epidemic has caused the term customer experience (CX) to gain importance. Analyzing and solving customer problems has become much more difficult. So how can we improve customer service in the new era, since we already know that there is no going back to what it was like before the epidemic?
There are many tools on the market that can be useful both in remote/online and direct contacts. Below we have selected the key and most helpful ones, the operation and method of use of which may be essential to improve customer service.
Media monitoring. Social listening tools and brand image
Social media monitoring tools are designed to listen to what is being said in social media about a company, brand or any other topic. The market offers many solutions in this area that are more or less tailored to the needs of companies, but they all undoubtedly have one basic feature in common. They allow you to search social media for mentions of a company/brand/product and extract not only what is being said, but also valuable information.
Internet and social media monitoring is perfect for analyzing the effectiveness of current campaigns, analyzing opinions and comments on new products and assessing the general reception of any decisions made by the company. But that’s not all. This type of software can also be used to check what our competition is doing. This will make it easier to compare their strategy with our own. This in turn results in the introduction of necessary changes.
Internet monitoring will also play a key role in avoiding or suppressing image crises that can occur anytime and anywhere. We are talking about media that live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Fortunately, social listening works in real time, so if any negative reactions appear online, we will be able to quickly locate the source of their origin and take concrete steps to nip the crisis in the bud.
Internet monitoring. Sentiment analysis and analysis of emotions in Internet user opinions. Insight marketing
Explaining this is a bit complicated, but sentiment analysis is essentially a tool for reviewing communication – whether it is emails, tweets or other – and extracting the information contained within it. However, it is more than just reading text. Sentiment analysis is the analysis of tones and contexts to best assess the meaning of words, rather than taking them at face value.
Sentimenti has an excellent tool to help analyze feedback. It also goes beyond the simple sentiment that companies have known so far, as it provides insight not only into whether a given opinion is positive or negative, but also to what extent. Additionally, the emotions contained in the customer’s comments are examined. There are as many as 8 of them.
Interestingly, Sentimenti tools, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence, examine tens of thousands of opinions in the blink of an eye as if over 20,000 people were reading and evaluating them. If one person did it, the analysis would take several or a dozen days. This is a revolutionary solution that has not been available on the Polish market so far. It is also based on science and is the result of months of expensive research on real people, not an artificial algorithm.
Sentimental analysis is particularly useful in markets where opinions change quickly and services must be constantly updated. However, any organization that wants to save time and respond to customer opinions faster and more effectively will also benefit from this analysis. It is good that ready-made software already exists for this type of analysis, which – considering the complexity – is much more convenient.
SMMW, behavioral analytics and consumer behavior research
Behavioral analytics involves studying consumer behavior on the web. The primary use of such tools is to predict customer needs and desires and proactively solve problems that may arise even before they occur. By checking user demographics, their previous purchases, and similar information, you can predict much of what general problems may arise. Using personal data, you can better understand their unique behavior.
A/B testing, which can be obtained from Google Optimize or a similar tool, is particularly important for checking the effects of changes to the page, while session replay tools such as Hotjar provide more in-depth insight. Behavioral analytics can also be used in sales, where cross-selling and personalization can provide a big boost in revenue by ensuring purchases in places where customers might not see the right products.
It is also useful for creating personalized marketing campaigns and tracking return on investment. Hotjar and Lucky Orange offer tools such as heatmaps, which are particularly helpful in this case. They will help you understand what your visitors are doing on your website, what they are clicking on, and what they may not be seeing.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Customer segments. Ways of communicating on the internet
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a relatively new technology on the market. The concept of CRM did not emerge until the 1980s. The idea behind CRM is to enable organizations to manage customer interactions and streamline processes to improve overall customer service. The goal is to increase profitability for the business, but it’s also a give-and-take approach that delivers real benefits not just to you, but to the customer as well.
The benefits to the business are wide-ranging. Sales teams can use CRM information to see how individual teams, campaigns, and products are performing. Marketing teams can use CRM data to predict the customer journey a particular person or demographic group might take and tailor their approach to the customer accordingly. Meanwhile, customer service agents can track cases efficiently across multiple platforms without the risk of misinterpreting queries.
Tools in action. Cloud software
Cloud software allows for a personalized approach to customers and extends its reach beyond anything that could have been expected just a few years ago.
Cloud computing not only allows organizations to track the effects of strategies and changes in real time, but also enables every department in the company to access information from anywhere. Key examples include Salesforce, a SaaS platform with useful marketing features, and file-sharing services like Dropbox and Google Drive.
This approach is similar to what is currently being used in scientific research. And for good reason. Cloud software allows teams across the company to instantly access any information in a database and use it to improve the customer experience. Instead of individual teams figuring out what works and what doesn’t, they can skip any mistakes that have already been tried and immediately improve the customer experience.
While this approach is more beneficial for large companies — also for cost reasons — there are advantages for smaller businesses as well. With a centralized place where all information is stored — online, without the risk of losing files or accidental corruption — teams can save time preparing for previous events.
What is omnichannel? Learn about omnichannel sales
Omnichannel often goes hand in hand with cloud databases. It’s simply a must-have if you have multiple channels of communication with your customers. This approach takes all of your contact lines and combines them into a single database, which varies from company to company. In some smaller organizations, a simple spreadsheet will suffice. In larger companies, a cloud database is often essential for cross-departmental and remote communication.
So what are the benefits of omnichannel for consumers? When communicating with someone about a query, no one likes to repeat themselves. Having easily accessible information that someone can access, even if it’s not the person who wrote the data, not only saves employees time and effort, but also prevents the customer from getting frustrated due to a lack of communication.
The best response is a quick response. Another thing is to provide the customer with all the necessary information without bothering them again.
Companies like Disney, Walgreens, and Starbucks have successfully implemented the omnichannel approach. And since tools like Salesforce Social Hub, TalkDesk, and Genesys Multi-Channel are available on the market and can help your business, why not give it a try?
Promoting your business online. Your company website and its constant monitoring
Google Analytics is a must. By that, we mean tracking user behavior on your company website, how they navigate it, what sections they focus on with their mouse, and what links they click on. This is about tracking actions, which is completely harmless and non-invasive, since the customer visiting your website has necessarily given their consent to interact with you.
Tracking your website can reveal a lot about your site’s layout, allowing you to identify any awkward elements that may need to be changed, showing how users navigate irregularly, and where they may end up leaving without making a purchase.
The data collected from tracking your website can be easily translated into a mapping of the online customer journey, thus deepening your understanding of how your customer thinks. While it won’t directly benefit your customers, the information you collect can provide insight into how to best design your website to make it easier for your customers to access the key information they’re looking for.
What’s on the market? Adobe Analytics offers traffic and multi-channel data collection, while Clicky analyzes real-time data on page views and events. Which tool you choose really depends on your business’s needs. Each offers the same basic tracking features with different analysis options.
Chatbots in Marketing and Process Automation
We left the topic of automation for last. It’s exactly what it sounds like: creating a system that does the job for you as much as possible. There are many ways to successfully implement it in customer service. For example, fully automated call centers or chatbots, which have become increasingly popular in recent years.
Some business leaders still scratch their heads at the thought of bots talking to their customers. But they’re very advanced and can be a great way to narrow down online queries — much like the aforementioned automated telephone switchboards.
More advanced versions can also tap into previous interactions or FAQ databases to find answers without involving a human agent. In this case, the benefit to the customer is speed, as a computer program can respond to any interaction almost immediately.
One of the most important benefits of automated responses is 24/7 support, not just during business hours. While there’s certainly no human touch that comes with talking to a team member, those needing help will prefer a bot’s response to waiting until the next morning to get valuable information that could ultimately be crucial to making a sale or turning a customer over to a competitor.
To sum up…
Customer experience is all about information. The more of it we have, the harder it is to find anything meaningful in it. However, with the right tools, which we wrote about below, you can let your computers do most of the work and still get much more meaningful analyses.
Speed is key these days when it comes to customer satisfaction, especially the younger ones. That’s why it’s worth taking a closer look at our advice and checking which of them meet the needs of companies.
by Damian Grimling | Nov 6, 2021 | Categorising comments, SentiBrand
Shopping is a constant part of our lives. Every day, we come into contact with a huge number of more or less recognizable brands and companies. However, only some of them we choose more often and more willingly. Sometimes it happens completely automatically. Why does this happen and what determines our choice? It is probably emotions.
Brand loyalty vs. brand strength. What determines our choice?
There’s no denying and it’s been proven that our purchasing decisions are mostly influenced by emotions and the bond that a brand has developed with us. A recent study conducted by Deloitte entitled “From disparate signals to transformative action. The latest research by Deloitte “From disparate signals to transformative action” shows that emotional attachment to a brand is a decisive factor when making purchases for a group of 80% of consumers. In turn, 62% of them declared that they have some kind of relationship with a given brand.
– The brand-consumer relationship is a particularly important factor in sales strategy because it is directly related to customer satisfaction. We as manufacturers are constantly challenged to create better and better offers that meet consumer expectations,” – reads the report.
For what purpose do we shop? Consumers often shop primarily to improve their mood. Nowadays, the purchase of a particular good or service does not have to be dictated by discounts, promotions or low prices. The key here is the mentioned emotions. They are the reason why some of our purchasing decisions are not very rational, made on impulse and at the moment.
So, what can a brand do to generate emotions and become even more liked and recognized by consumers? What is the secret and power of the biggest brands and their messages? Apart from emotions, it is important to build positive associations in the recipients. It is worth remembering to adjust the communication strategy to the target group. An advertising campaign addressed to teenagers should look different from one addressed to people aged 40+.
Visual identity also plays a huge role in consumers’ perception of a brand. We live in a world of short information, slogans and signs. That is why logos, colors, symbols and general aesthetics of products are important. All this also creates the image of the company according to the buyer and has a bearing on building a relationship between him and the brand.
The basis is brand loyalty and trust
Today’s market abounds in various brands, and more and more are created all the time. We are almost flooded with various products and symbols, often not knowing what it all means. However, companies that enjoy the greatest recognition and consumer choice are not resting on their laurels and are constantly developing their offers. The key is to constantly work on the image because without this, it is impossible to maintain the leadership position.
In the aforementioned Deloitte report we read that if a brand wants not only to stay on the market, but above all to boast of constant trust, it needs constant work and listening to consumers. This means staying up to date with the ever-present changes and new trends. Without this, it will not be possible to maintain the highest standards and respond to the preferences of as many customers as possible.
The consumer who has established a bond with the brand is then not only a recurring generator of profit, but also an engaged recipient. Building long-term partnerships with consumers means, above all, responding responsibly and effectively to their needs. More and more companies emphasize personalization and considering individual preferences of consumers to provide them with the most suitable benefits.
Many factors contribute to the choice of a particular brand, but first there are positive emotions and associations. To build them, we need a dialogue with consumers, a trusting answer to their needs as well as building the opinion of a unique brand, positively distinguishing itself from the competition. We can easily learn about emotions by analyzing media, including blogs, news portals, internet forums and most of all social networking sites. That’s what Sentimenti tools are for.
by Damian Grimling | May 10, 2021 | SentiBrand
The topic of vaccines, and specifically the differences between them, arouses great emotion. Analysis of Google search phrases shows that the public is still looking for information on the differences between preparations of different manufacturers. “Which vaccine to choose?”, “Moderna or Pfizer?” – are just some of them. This time we took to the workshop conversations of Internet users about five preparations. We explored the emotions and sentiment between them to see how they differ.
Pfizer or Moderna, or which vaccine to choose?
The material analyzed by our team represents a total of nearly 190,000 mentions of five vaccine manufacturers between January 1 and May 6, 2021. Content about specific manufacturers was filtered out of discussions about COVID-19 vaccines overall. Using the SentiTool tool, it only took a few minutes to get the full results.
Preparations were most often discussed by Internet users under articles on news sites. The second place in terms of discussion sites was Twitter, followed by Facebook. On news portals, Internet users discussed AstraZeneca most often. This is also where a lot of opinions about the Sputnik-V vaccine from Russia were reported online. On Twitter and Facebook, but also in other places, it was Pfizer. These two vaccines are among the most commented on.
The graph of discussion dynamics (monthly data) shows that the AstraZeneca controversy has had its effect. This vaccine was discussed very intensively – most often in March this year. Johnson&Johnson was the least discussed. It is worth noting that in a significant number of opinions there were more names of preparations.
COVID-19 vaccines – a comparison. Sentiment and emotion
When looking at the differences in sentiment of opinion of a given vaccine versus the others, two extremes are clearly visible. Johnson’s was the most positively commented on during the study period. In contrast, the most negative statements were reported around Sputnik-V. The controversy around vaccine reactions after AstraZeneca’s vaccine ultimately did not impair the online image. More unfavorable content was seen from Pfizer, which may come as a surprise.
DIFFERENCES IN OPINION SENTIMENT BETWEEN VACCINES DURING THE STUDY PERIOD
Differences in the intensity of negative and positive sentiment inopinions on COVID-19 formulations. The graph shows how sentiment differed for each vaccine from the other four
This preparation is one of the most popular among Poles and it is with this preparation that citizens most often want to be vaccinated. This may have been influenced by the co-occurrence of other preparation names together with Pfizer. This is because we are primarily examining the general climate of online discussion around the products of pharmaceutical companies. Thus the graph below shows how opinions on one preparation could have influenced the discussion climate around another preparation on the basis of co-occurrence. Moderna and AstraZeneca co-occurred most frequently with Pfizer.
Co-occurrence analysis of formulations in online reviews
The chart below breaks the positive and negative sentiment into eight base emotions for an even closer look at vaccine opinions. Sputnik-V differed from the other formulations with a high dose of disgust (about 13% more than the others) from internet users, while Pfizer differed with fear and sadness. AstraZeneca reported a slight increase in confidence and expectation. With the same emotions, single-dose Johnson differed from the rest most on the plus side (with strong decreases in negative emotions relative to competitors). As for Moderna, there is little difference from the other four formulations against COVID-19.
The above analysis is illustrative and informative. It does not reflect the full results of the study.
