Public Opinion Knowledge Research Articles

Analysing environmental opinion using highly customisable visualisation tools to understand citizens’ attitudes and barriers

Knowledge of public opinion is key to understanding citizens' attitudes towards environmental policies. However, large polls and surveys generate complex datasets from which it is not always easy to draw conclusions. In addition, tailor-made solutions for analysing public opinion face the challenge of handling too many layers of information, which can easily lead to an overwhelming user experience and impair decision-making. Service design methodologies can support the design of ad hoc visualisation tools focused on user needs. We present Op-e-nion, a case study of a visualisation tool for the analysis of public opinion regarding environmental issues, aimed at administrations and public institutions. The involvement of experts from different fields allowed for the identification of the main metrics necessary to target the least engaged socio-demographic groups as well as the barriers that limited their environmental actions. Experts also highlighted useful aspects of the design process and the final prototype to help them define more effective campaigns and policies to address social challenges and promote citizen action. An innovative step was introduced in the methodology by involving non-state actors in the evaluation of the tool, ensuring problem detection and enhancing the sustainability of the final product. Important aspects for the visualisation of multi-categorical data included simplifying the interaction with the tool while prioritising relevant information, and using highly customizable visualisations to answer specific user requirements and changing needs (i.e. analytical vs. managerial tasks). Improved visualisations of public opinion data will, in turn, better support the development of policies shaped by citizens’ concerns.

Retracted: Interoperability of Multimedia Network Public Opinion Knowledge Base Group Based on Multisource Text Mining

Retracted: Interoperability of Multimedia Network Public Opinion Knowledge Base Group Based on Multisource Text Mining

Analisis Sentimen pada Program Transportasi Publik JakLingko dengan Metode Support Vector Machine

As a metropolitan city with high mobility, public transportation plays an important role in facilitating economic, business and government activities in DKI Jakarta. DKI Jakarta provincial government launched the JakLingko program to create an integrated, convenient, efficient, and affordable public transportation system. Knowledge of public opinion can help improve the service quality of the JakLingko program. The use of social media is becoming very popular nowadays. Through social media, anyone can easily express their opinion about an issue. It is used to obtain objective and latest public opinion. Sentiment analysis is a method that can be used to analyze public opinion. Through sentiment analysis whose data was collected from Twitter, it can be seen how the public opinion toward JakLingko program. In this study, public sentiment will be classified into positive sentiment or negative sentiment. As for the classification, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm is used.

A systematic literature review on the main factors for public acceptance of drones

Drones have become usual among the civilian population and are enabling cities to be more interconnected and intelligent. However, few studies about the public's opinion on drones have been conducted and those are usually particular for a certain country or region. Knowledge of public opinion is crucial for guiding government policies, particularly on new technologies. This work aims to conduct a systematic review to identify the civilian public attitude toward drones and to assess the main factors that influence opinion. A total of 30 studies were included in the review, analyzing public opinion regarding drones in 15 countries. The review shows that public opinion is influenced by socio-cultural aspects, the main perceived risks and the main expected benefits. Socio-cultural factors were related to demographic aspects, such as geographic location, technological expertise, and familiarity with drone-related terminology. The main perceived risks included drone misuse, privacy disrespect, malfunction, damage, safety, noise and legal liability. The main expected benefits, such as application flexibility, emergency response and monitoring, cost reduction and safety, are also described. This review may orient future qualitative and quantitative research on public acceptance of drones and guide researchers and decision makers on drone use by describing the influencing factors on the population's perceived benefits and risks.

Interoperability of Multimedia Network Public Opinion Knowledge Base Group Based on Multisource Text Mining

Internet media has gradually replaced the existence of traditional media and has become the main place for people to express their views and opinions on social events. Based on the huge user base, after social events occur, a large number of Internet users promote the derivation and dissemination of topics to form Internet public opinion. The fast communication process and wide communication coverage have brought higher requirements to the supervision of Internet public opinion. Internet public opinion is an important expression of sociological intelligence at present, and multisource text mining technology has become a commonly used form of expression based on unstructured data by research scholars, providing relatively important technical support for public opinion information data analysis. After analyzing the relevant research literature of the multimedia network knowledge base groups in detail, this paper analyzes the operating factors and mechanisms among the multimedia network knowledge base groups elaborately. Finally, it is applied to the process of network public opinion analysis. The results of the case analysis show that the multisource text mining algorithm can provide a strong basis for the construction of a multimedia network public opinion knowledge base group.

The Future of the Polish Energy Mix in the Context of Social Expectations

Currently, Poland has been facing a process of intensive changes in the energy sector, motivated by the strengthening of the goals of the climate and energy policy at the European level. A key challenge for energy transition in Poland is to build an energy system that corresponds with social needs not only in terms of energy demand, but also environmental protection, with a strong role of local initiatives. The aim of this study is to present the expectations of the Poles regarding the optimal energy mix, especially representatives of local governments, and their awareness of the needs and expectations of their local communities. According to the authors, local governments are extremely important links, responsible for the development of the energy economy and energy security at the local level. The authors set themselves the task of verifying whether local authorities are prepared to create a substantive energy policy at the local level in accordance with the directions of the Polish energy policy and on the basis of local conditions, including the opinions of the inhabitants of a given region. The objective of this work was achieved by reviewing the available sources and the adopted survey method. A review of the literature, in particular in terms of the conducted research on the social acceptance in terms of energy policy, showed that there are no comprehensive surveys of the opinions of local government representatives. The results of study conducted by the authors showed that although the vast majority of respondents know the assumptions of the Polish energy policy until 2030, almost a quarter did not realize that the energy policy will be changed in the near future. At the same time, the vast majority of respondents believe that the Polish government should prepare a social campaign related to the energy policy. According to the authors, this proves the need to improve the awareness of this research group, which may bring benefits in the process of shaping the energy economy of the regions. The survey also showed preferences of the representatives of local governments for the optimal energy mix in Poland and their subjective assessment of the knowledge of public opinion in the region on the expected shape of the energy policy. From the findings, it can be concluded that more in-depth research is needed on the preparation of local governments to shape energy policy at the local level, including more detailed research on how opinions of the inhabitants of a given region and the specificity of a given region are taken into account while shaping local energy policy.

Feature Representation and Organization Method for Public Opinion Big Data Based on Association Analysis

In order to improve the data mining level of public opinion big data, by analysing the relationship among semantic web, ontology and RDF (Resource Description Framework), the structure and organization method of public opinion big data association data are separated. Based on the analysis of network public opinion big data organization technology, and then the RDF structure definition of network public opinion knowledge map is given, and the construction method of RDF association analysis map of network public opinion knowledge is realized. Experimental research shows that the proposed method can provide more accurate correlation analysis of public opinion big data, which can effectively realize the analysis and management of public opinion hot events, and provide decision support for the management of network public opinion.

Sentiment Analysis of French Tweets based on Subjective Lexicon Approach: Evaluation of the use of OpenNLP and CoreNLP Tools

Nowadays, sentiment analysis is becoming a very important issue of research. This paper present experimentation on sentiment analysis based on subjective lexicon method. This experimentation is tested over French tweets using "Public Opinion Knowledge (POK)" platform. POK is a platform consists in getting public opinion orientation from text extracted from social network and blogs, which we have developed and presented in previous papers. There are three algorithms as classifiers, which are based on Natural Language Processing Tools. The first is based on OpenNLP, the second on CoreNLP and the third on dependency analysis implemented by CoreNLP. Each classifier consists of three steps, which are Part of Speech Tagging (POS), word polarity classification and sentiment classification algorithm. On the one hand, the results are used to evaluate the use of OpenNLP and CoreNLP, on other, they draw to make a comparison between lexicon and machine-learning approaches. So, experimentation leads us to conclude that tools of sentiment analysis based on lexicon are much performant than those based on machine learning and they can reach a rate of precision of 70% and F-measure of 0.7. Also, we conclude that CoreNLP is more efficient than OpenNLP by 3% of precision, this fact is due to the efficiency of Part of Speech tagging algorithms.

The public's voice about healthcare quality regulation policies. A population-based survey.

BackgroundIn the wake of various high-profile incidents in a number of countries, regulators of healthcare quality have been criticised for their ‘soft’ approach. In politics, concerns were expressed about public confidence. It was claimed that there are discrepancies between public opinions related to values and the values guiding regulation policies. Although the general public are final clients of regulators’ work, their opinion has only been discussed in research to a limited extent.The aim of this study is to explore possible discrepancies between public values and opinions and current healthcare quality regulation policies.MethodsA questionnaire was submitted to 1500 members of the Dutch Healthcare Consumer Panel. Questions were developed around central ideas underlying healthcare quality regulation policies.ResultsThe response rate was 58.3 %. The regulator was seen as being more responsible for quality of care than care providers. Patients were rated as having the least responsibility. Similar patterns were observed for the food service industry and the education sector. Complaints by patients’ associations were seen as an important source of information for quality regulation, while fewer respondents trusted information delivered by care providers. However, respondents supported the regulator’s imposition of lighter measures firstly.ConclusionsThere are discrepancies and similarities between public opinion and regulation policies. The discrepancies correspond to fundamental concepts; decentralisation of responsibilities is not what the public wants. There is little confidence in the regulator’s use of information obtained by care providers’ internal monitoring, while a larger role is seen for complaints of patient organisations. This discrepancy seems not to exist regarding the regulator’s approach of imposing measures. A gradual, and often soft approach, is favoured by the majority of the public in spite of the criticism that is voiced in the media regarding this approach. Our study contributes to the limited knowledge of public opinion on government regulation policies. This knowledge is needed in order to effectively assess different approaches to involve the public in regulation policies.

Exploring the existence of drug policy ‘ideologies’ in Australia

Aims: Knowledge of public opinion towards drug policy is often limited to analyses of individual survey questions. There has been less thought given to the underlying structure of public opinion, and how attitudes towards different facets of drug policy, for example, law enforcement and harm reduction, might align into ideological positions. This paper aims to assess the extent to which distinct ideologies are present among the general public in Australia in relation to drug policy.Method: The study involved a Latent Class Analysis of data taken from the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey. The analysis categorized individuals into mutually exclusive groups (classes), according to their responses to 15 attitudinal items.Findings: Six classes of individuals were identified, and were labelled as: uninformed, ambivalent, detached prohibitionists, committed prohibitionists, harm reductionists and legalizers.Conclusions: The unique analysis presented in this paper demonstrates the existence of six distinct classes of opinions towards drug policy in an Australian sample. Whilst there were a large proportion of respondents in support of both drug legalization and harm reduction, there were also many who opposed drug legalization, yet supported harm reduction. Any assumption that supporting harm reduction automatically equates with support for legalization, is erroneous.

Media Poll-Itics in Canadian Elections: A Report on Accelerated Public Opinion

This essay develops a technocultural studies approach to political elections and polling. First, I shift our attention from polling as a cultural form to developments in polling technology that are transfiguring this form. I then examine the production and circulation of political opinion during the 2004 and 2006 Canadian elections in order to expose the limits of the media's criticism of polling and to contend that published preelection polls contribute to the formation of suspicious subjects. I go on to argue that political campaign communication is open to information accidents so that politicians get elected not just because of what they say, or how they say it, but when they say it. Within the accelerated serial mix of public opinion, stories, commentary, and events, political support and momentum were articulated with the politicization of affect to shape the outcome. While preelection polls may not produce knowledge of public opinion, they are a political technology and a vector of power.

The Public's Preference for Bedside Rationing

Ubel and Arnold¹do a remarkable job of cataloguing the flaws in the ethical opposition to bedside rationing as compared with thirdparty rules. Although they are correct that we are sorely in need of empirical data about the actual effects of bedside rationing, they might have observed that we do have knowledge of public opinion. Considering that other rationing mechanisms are enforced by insurers and government bureaucrats, the public is overwhelmingly on the side of rationing by medical professionals. A 1992 poll conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, Washington, DC, found that 35% of those surveyed would prefer their family physician to set any necessary limits on health care services, 35% would chose a local panel of medical professionals, and only 9% would favor insurers or employers setting limits. A nationwide survey conducted in 1994 by Harris (commissioned by the Medica Foundation, Minneapolis, Minn) found that 34% of

Urban Community Leaders' Knowledge of Public Opinion

Urban Community Leaders' Knowledge of Public Opinion

Urban Community Leaders' Knowledge of Public Opinion

ECISION-MAKERS whose task it is to enact social policies which affect the lives and sensitivities of the public tend to take into account the opinions and preferences of the public. It has long been a matter of debate among students of politics just how sensitive and/or responsive they ought to be to such preferences. Neglected, however, has been debate and/or research into decisionmakers' ability correctly to perceive the affected public's policy preferences. A recent study by Miller and Stokes' is one of the few investigations into this area. Miller and Stokes are concerned with the ability of United States representatives to estimate correctly their constituents' policy preferences. The authors discovered that only a weak relationship existed between constituency preferences and representatives' views of these preferences. Their findings thus cast great doubts on the ability of our national representatives to recognize the constituency preferences. It must, however, be borne in mind that elected partisan officials do have another opportunity to gauge constituency views. That opportunity occurs at election time when they take cognizance of the constituency's party preference. Parties do seem to stand for policies in the view of the public,2 and party preferences may hence serve some elected officials as a guide to the wishes of the public. No such guide, however, exists for decision-makers who operate in a realm ostensibly designated as nonpartisan, as would be the case for school boards, urban planners, etc. Yet these decision-makers are very often the ones who are called upon to make decisions which most directly and intimately affect the lives of people. It might be argued that the suitability as well as the success of such decisions can at times depend on the accuracy of the knowledge decision-makers have of their constituency. To misperceive a community's readiness to accept a drastically new school curriculum, for example, can and has led to such a program's failure irrespective of its intrinsic merit. Similar examples could be cited for new programs or experiments in crime control, urban renewal, public health, community planning, etc. Yet programs such as these play increasingly important roles in urban areas.