Public-Opinion Sentiment Analysis for Large Hydro Projects

Abstract

AbstractPublic opinion is becoming increasingly involved in feasibility studies, construction, and post-evaluation of large hydro projects. Recently, with the rapid development of social network services, sentiment analysis can provide officials and managers with fresh perspectives on public-relation problems in project management. An effective sentiment analysis method can enable projects to gain from public participation. In this paper, a project sentiment analysis (PSA) system using a lexicon-based method is proposed. This system collects user opinions from social network sites, establishes emotion dictionaries, and builds basic rules that calculate those sentiment values embodied in a collection of messages. The Three Gorges project (TGP) was used as a case study for demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed PSA. Sentiment analysis results show that about half (47.7%) of the collected messages expressed negative emotions towards the TGP, while the other messages were positive or neutral. The cas...