Sentiment Analysis of Covid-19 Twitter Data using Deep Learning Algorithm

Abstract

A key method used in the study of Natural Language Processing (NLP) is sentiment analysis, or emotion analysis, plays a pivotal role in text analysis. Its primary function is to discern and categorize the underlying emotions within textual content, classifying them as positive, neutral, or negative sentiments. A variety of textual inputs can be used with this process, including entire documents, individual sentences, and more. Understanding the sentiments expressed by individuals is of paramount importance to organizations in today’s digital age. Clients and customers now have the means to express their thoughts and emotions with greater ease and immediacy than ever before. This wealth of sentiment data can offer valuable insights that organizations can leverage to enhance their products, services, and overall customer experience. The present study focuses on the sentiment analysis of Twitter data related to the COVID-19 pandemic, employing the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) algorithm. To improve the accuracy of sentiment analysis, a pre-processing procedure is introduced, which involves the use of the Neat Text module in Python to clean the tweets. In this research endeavor, a dataset comprising 1,79,107 COVID-19-related tweets is subjected to sentiment analysis using the proposed pre-processing module and LSTM. The results demonstrate an impressive accuracy rate of 96% in accurately determining the sentiments conveyed in these COVID-19 tweets. In contrast, the existing algorithm, based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN), achieved a significantly lower accuracy rate of 76%. This research not only showcases the effectiveness of LSTM and pre-processing in sentiment analysis but also highlights the significance of sentiment analysis in gaining valuable insights from vast amounts of textual data, especially when important events like the COVID-19 pandemic are involved.