Opinion mining approach to study media-image of energy production. Implications to public acceptance and market deployment

Abstract

The nature of media image, through either traditional or social media, may have an influence on public acceptance of energy technologies. The potential impact on decision-making can make media image a factor for technology market deployment, similar to technical, legal, and economic factors. Public acceptance tends to be shaped by how technologies are presented in the media. This study compares and analyses the media image of various power production technologies. Editorial and social media are analysed by using the M-Adaptive tool for media monitoring to obtain the media sentiment. The analysis is rather broad, including three million social media platforms and various news outlets in many regions and covering an enormous number of data points, from which this study has selected over 250,000 for further analysis with the help of artificial intelligence. The results indicate that public sentiment towards power production technologies varies among different technologies, and between editorial publications and social media. Editorial content is usually constructed by using news frames, whereas social media includes more emotional content from single users. A potential chain from media image to energy technology market deployment is suggested. The findings support the notion of social media having an increasing role in shaping public opinion, which may need to be acknowledged to a larger extent.