Popular Sentiment Research Articles

The Resurgence of New Malay Nationalism on social media post-GE14

The 14th General Election has significantly changed Malaysia when Barisan Nasional suffered its first ever defeat since Independence. However, among the Malay majority, there was a growing sense of political anxiety and uneasiness as a result of the perceived loss of power, and to some extent, the erosion of national identity. In response, the nationalists and the Islamists have regrouped and reunited. This is manifested with the formal alliance of the two largest Malay-based parties, UMNO and PAS. Amidst the backdrop of this new political realignment, social media played an important role in setting the narrative, and mobilising the masses. Therefore, working from within this background, this paper analysed the discourse of the new Malay nationalism on social media by employing a social media tool, SeoTools, to analyse the Twitter data. The findings revealed a new insight into the dynamics of the Malay mind and motivation from the context of politics, religion, and economy. There was a significant correlation between popular sentiment and social media discourse, in that there was a renewed resurgence to reassert traditional values and identity. The failure to rein in the emotion, and the expectation, eventually cause the fall of Pakatan Harapan in 2020.

Amazon/iRobot: harbinger of legal dissonance, or lesson in unintended consequences?

This article examines the process that resulted in the abandonment of Amazon’s proposed acquisition of iRobot in light of the Statement of Objections issued by the European Commission and the substantive provisions of the newly enacted Digital Markets Act. It questions whether the Commission could have credibly challenged the deal on the basis of concerns that Amazon may have had the ability and incentive to engage in certain potentially harmful conduct that would already, to a not insignificant extent, have been prohibited ex ante under the Digital Markets Act. While a more vigilant approach to merger control may be warranted in response to perceived historical underenforcement, intervention motivated by the increasingly popular sentiment that competition in digital markets is suffering a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ should be underpinned by a cogent theory of harm. Insights may be drawn from an emergent ecosystem theory, which seeks to refocus the lens of competition law from narrow market definition to capture a broader network of complementors. However, it is suggested that the decimation of iRobot precipitated by regulatory over-reach stands in diametric opposition to the broad objectives espoused, in particular, by a new generation of competition officials. Ultimately, this article questions whether the outcome of the Commission’s investigation in Amazon/iRobot stands as a harbinger of legal dissonance, or a lesson in unintended consequences.

(Re)Framing abortion: the lamination of trafficking in reproductive rights discourse

ABSTRACT Human trafficking has historically been exploited for political purposes and to reify social hierarchies. Popular media and conspiracies such as QAnon have reinforced many of these myths about human trafficking. As reproductive rights have continued to be contested in the U.S. with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the term ‘abortion trafficking’ has been introduced to leverage fears related to trafficking and unify opposition to abortion access. This article considers how ‘abortion trafficking’ reflects a tradition of laminating human trafficking onto polarizing discourse frames. Utilizing Goffman’s conception of lamination in his work on frame analysis, identification of how ‘abortion trafficking’ has been manifested in popular discourse is identified. Implications of the effects of such laminations on theory and popular sentiment are considered.

Popular Understandings and the Limits of Popular Democracy

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on how more democratic processes and more democratic participation are not in themselves good measures for a successful democratic order. Rather, whether more democratic participation is good depends on the type of knowledge the people actually bring to the political order. Increases in democratic participation are, thus, a misleading measure of democratic success. The crucial point is what sort of knowledge the people bring to democratic discourse. Furthermore, political and civic institutions play a key role in fostering and shaping public understandings. Here, I suggest that American institutions, while designed to help educate popular understandings by requiring the building of complex democratic majorities, have in many instances enabled the worst aspects of popular government, often empowering minority rule, rather than refining popular sentiment. Thus, American political institutions could engage in constitutional reform to recapture the balance between popular understandings and the constitutional institutions that help articulate, educate, and refine those understandings.

In the shadow of famine: How do Russo–Ukrainian and Russo–Kazakh relations impact memorialisation of the Holodomor and Kazakh famine?

The trajectories of public memory and memorialisation of the famines of the 1930s have been vastly different for Kazakhstan and Ukraine, despite the common causation of these national tragedies. Many of the disparities between memorialisation of these events emerge from these nations’ different post–collapse trajectories. A not insignificant amount of vacillation on memory policy occurred as both nations grappled with the past, owing to the various orientations of national leadership and popular sentiment as contexts shifted. While Ukraine sought to forge an independent path quickly post–collapse, Kazakhstan maintained close relations with Russia until recently. Changes to Kazakhstan’s foreign policy spurred, in part, by the Russian full–scale invasion of Ukraine have in turn prompted a revaluation of famine memory. This article seeks to illustrate the complexity of nations coming to terms with their Soviet pasts alongside new domestic and international concerns and illustrate the value of comparative analysis of famine memory through a post–colonial lens.

Forging Frontline Russians

This article considers efforts by the de facto authorities of non-governmental-controlled areas (NGCAs) of eastern Ukraine to shape regional identity from 2014 through 2021. It focuses on the paradoxes of top-down identity construction in an environment of mixed popular sentiments, fluid borders, and an uncertain political future. It argues that nascent identity construction projects in the NGCAs were often inconsistent and unclear, emphasizing different layers of “candidate Fatherlands,” be it the individual self-declared republics, the Donbas, Novorossiia, the Russian Federation, or a broader Russian civilization. While internally inconsistent and contradictive, however, the various initiatives often took antemurale political myths as a point of departure. These myths spin around the idea that regional inhabitants constitute a particular brand of “frontline Russians”—hardened warriors protecting a western outpost of the Russian civilization. Even as “candidate Fatherlands” came and went, this ideational core manifested not only in policy and aloof declarations, but also in a persistent growth of so-called military-patriotic education in the region. Militarized ideas of political identity became mainstream within the occupied areas—reflecting both influences from Russia and the ongoing war.

Sacred Space, Mourning and the War Dead in Protestant Germany, 1945–

Abstract Using the Flensburg Memorial Dispute of 1967 as a microstudy, this article explores how Germany’s twentieth-century war dead have been represented within Protestant sacred space since 1945. It highlights the central role played by church spaces in the mourning and commemoration of Germany’s war dead and the tremendous difficulties accompanying attempts to redesign these iconographies in the later twentieth century in the face of popular sentiment.

Sentiment Analysis Regarding Candidate Presidential 2024 Using Support Vector Machine Backpropagation Based

This research has the potential to make an important contribution to the development of computationally-based sentiment analysis, particularly in the political context. Anies Baswedan, Ganjar Pranowo, and Prabowo Subianto, three candidates for the presidency of Indonesia, are examined using a Backpropagation-based Support Vector Machine (SVM) methodology in this study. This approach is used to categorize emotions into three groups: neutral, adverse, and favorable. Between July 1 and July 30, 2023, data on tweets mentioning the three presidential contenders was gathered. After processing the data, SVM was used while lowering the backpropagation process. The study's findings demonstrate that the performance of the model in determining public sentiment is greatly enhanced by the application of backpropagation-based SVM techniques. For each presidential contender, the evaluation was conducted using the f1 score, recall, and precision metrics. The evaluation's findings indicate that while the model struggles to distinguish between favorable and negative feelings toward particular presidential contenders, it performs better when categorizing neutral feelings. The SVM model is more accurately able to identify popular sentiment toward the three presidential candidates when the backpropagation approach is used. The results of the sentiment analysis are also represented by word clouds for each presidential contender, giving an intuitive sense of the words that are frequently used in public discourse. This study sheds light on the possibilities of using Twitter data to analyze political sentiment using the backpropagation-based SVM algorithm.

Making sense of the COVID-19 crisis: information-seeking practices and attitudes towards information providers among Baltic audiences

ABSTRACTDrawing on a comparative cross-country survey and qualitative interview data, this article explores audiences’ information-seeking practices and sentiments related to news media and other information providers in Estonia and Latvia during the COVID-19 crisis. It concludes that members of both the ethno-linguistic majority and the Russian-speaking minority relied primarily on their social network and local experts to make sense of the pandemic, with media playing a rather moderate role. Russian speakers reoriented their news media repertoires away from Russian television toward local news providers. Despite popular sentiments of media skepticism in both countries, audiences in Estonia express more confidence in local news media. Alongside ethno-linguistic divides, the study illuminates socio-economic rifts in media-society relations.

Knowledge and attitudes of Polish prosecutors and general Polish population in regard to post-mortem computed tomography in 2019.

Post-mortem computer tomography (PMCT) is an imaging technique that is gaining popularity both worldwide and in Poland. It provides certain benefits in death investigation that a conventional autopsy is not able to, however, it has significant limitations. As PMCT and post-mortem computed angiography (PMCTA) continue to develop in this country, it is critical to become aware what people know and think about these imaging techniques, especially the prosecutors who officially order such examinations to be performed. In 2019, two concurrent surveys were administered to Polish prosecutors and general Polish population, respectively, regarding their current knowledge and opinions on PMCT. The results were collected both online and on paper, and then subjected to analysis. In total, 92 prosecutors and 227 non-prosecutors responded to the survey. The present authors observed that while prosecutors were more likely to have heard of this examination than the general public, their knowledge was often inadequate or incorrect. Conventional autopsy was still held as the gold standard in death investigation. However, a good popular sentiment towards PMCT was shown, and a desire to learn more about it - not just among prosecutors, but among the general public as well. The present authors' recommendation is that more courses and training should be organised for Polish prosecutors to compensate this knowledge gap.

Popular Sentiments and Political Failures: Understanding the Disintegration of the Republic of Moldova, 1989–1990

Popular Sentiments and Political Failures: Understanding the Disintegration of the Republic of Moldova, 1989–1990

한국 대중가요가 노래해온 죽음에 관한 탐색적 연구 - 1920년대부터 1950년대까지를 중심으로

This study analyzes how the meaning of death has changed in early Korean popular songs. As a representation of social change and popular sentiment, such songs have constantly changed the meaning of death throughout history. The view of death and the way it is sung has also changed at different points in the 100-year history of Korean popular songs, which began as a praise of death. The nihilism of the loss of sovereignty during the emergence of popular song was expressed in songs of personal mourning, martyrdom for the emperor during the period of increased militarism, and mourning for those who died for their country during the period from liberation to the Korean War.
 As we learn about the future from the past, a retrospective of the history of popular songs about death at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is forcing us to reflect on death more seriously will be an opportunity to observe not only the changes in public interest in death, but also the cross-section of death as perceived by society.

A text analytics model for agricultural knowledge discovery and sustainable food production: A case study from Oklahoma Panhandle

With recent increases in the use of social media in agricultural communities, many farmers are showing more and more interest in participating in social media and sharing different aspects of their profession with peers and policymakers. However, researchers have not explored this valuable data source well enough to help improve agribusiness decision-making. This study aims to investigate the potential capability and richness of social media for agricultural knowledge discovery, which can help monitor, detect, and predict critical agricultural events and activities and develop more sustainable food production and agricultural economy. This research utilizes text-mining tools and techniques to collect, process, and mine unstructured textual data from Twitter. Then, it examines the agreement between the retrieved information from tweets and that from the current monitoring systems and common cultural practices. Our findings illustrate that social media data can effectively provide information regarding the commencement and duration of significant cultural activities This study also examines the classification performance of several popular sentiment analysis tools on the farmer’s tweets and provides suggestions for future research on domain-specific sentiment lexicons for agricultural purposes.

Negativity and Positivity in the ICU: Exploratory Development of Automated Sentiment Capture in the Electronic Health Record.

To develop proof-of-concept algorithms using alternative approaches to capture provider sentiment in ICU notes. Retrospective observational cohort study. The Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring of Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) deidentified notes databases. Adult (≥18 yr old) patients admitted to the ICU. We developed two sentiment models: 1) a keywords-based approach using a consensus-based clinical sentiment lexicon comprised of 72 positive and 103 negative phrases, including negations and 2) a Decoding-enhanced Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers with disentangled attention-v3-based deep learning model (keywords-independent) trained on clinical sentiment labels. We applied the models to 198,944 notes across 52,997 ICU admissions in the MIMIC-III database. Analyses were replicated on an external sample of patients admitted to a UCSF ICU from 2018 to 2019. We also labeled sentiment in 1,493 note fragments and compared the predictive accuracy of our tools to three popular sentiment classifiers. Clinical sentiment terms were found in 99% of patient visits across 88% of notes. Our two sentiment tools were substantially more predictive (Spearman correlations of 0.62-0.84, p values < 0.00001) of labeled sentiment compared with general language algorithms (0.28-0.46). Our exploratory healthcare-specific sentiment models can more accurately detect positivity and negativity in clinical notes compared with general sentiment tools not designed for clinical usage.

신라 하대 발해 使行의 지향과 결과

The King Wonseong dispatched envoys to Balhae as a measure to mollify the unrest of political situation. This was possible first because there was no major conflict with Balhae at the time, secondly because the economic cost was manageable, and thirdly because they looked down on that state. This work helped to deal with the confused internal situation, as well as enabling the King Wonseong to maintain his power.&#x0D; At the beginning of his reign, King Heondeok dispatched envoys to Balhae to strengthen his position through the reorganization of the political situation. Since the primary goal of this negotiation was to seize power easily, it was inadequate to develop relationship between the two states. Later, the popular sentiment was confused due to frequent natural disasters and Balhae started expanding its power. For these reasons, it was difficult to progress public negotiations.

Evaluating the Applicability of Existing Lexicon-Based Sentiment Analysis Techniques on Family Medicine Resident Feedback Field Notes: Retrospective Cohort Study.

Field notes, a form for resident-preceptor clinical encounter feedback, are widely adopted across Canadian medical residency training programs for documenting residents' performance. This process generates a sizeable cumulative collection of feedback text, which is difficult for medical education faculty to navigate. As sentiment analysis is a subfield of text mining that can efficiently synthesize the polarity of a text collection, sentiment analysis may serve as an innovative solution. This study aimed to examine the feasibility and utility of sentiment analysis using 3 popular sentiment lexicons on medical resident field notes. We used a retrospective cohort design, curating text data from University of Toronto medical resident field notes gathered over 2 years (from July 2019 to June 2021). Lexicon-based sentiment analysis was applied using 3 standardized dictionaries, modified by removing ambiguous words as determined by a medical subject matter expert. Our modified lexicons assigned words from the text data a sentiment score, and we aggregated the word-level scores to a document-level polarity score. Agreement between dictionaries was assessed, and the document-level polarity was correlated with the overall preceptor rating of the clinical encounter under assessment. Across the 3 original dictionaries, approximately a third of labeled words in our field note corpus were deemed ambiguous and were removed to create modified dictionaries. Across the 3 modified dictionaries, the mean sentiment for the "Strengths" section of the field notes was mildly positive, while it was slightly less positive in the "Areas of Improvement" section. We observed reasonable agreement between dictionaries for sentiment scores in both field note sections. Overall, the proportion of positively labeled documents increased with the overall preceptor rating, and the proportion of negatively labeled documents decreased with the overall preceptor rating. Applying sentiment analysis to systematically analyze field notes is feasible. However, the applicability of existing lexicons is limited in the medical setting, even after the removal of ambiguous words. Limited applicability warrants the need to generate new dictionaries specific to the medical education context. Additionally, aspect-based sentiment analysis may be applied to navigate the more nuanced structure of texts when identifying sentiments. Ultimately, this will allow for more robust inferences to discover opportunities for improving resident teaching curriculums.

Still a Nation of White Immigrants? Notes on the Present Debate

Abstract Recent years have generated an unprecedented popular decision about US racial identity. Before this, popular sentiment and legal policy clearly and congruently promoted immigration of white noncitizens, while severely restricting others. Until the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965, the US law reflected Justice Grier's statement in Smith v. Turner, 48 U.S. 283, 461 (1849): “It is the cherished policy of the general government to encourage and invite Christian foreigners of our own race to seek an asylum within our borders, and to . . . add to the wealth, population, and power of the nation.” However, the 1965 reform and its successors diversified the immigrant stream and the nation, and current polls indicate that the majority of the US population now supports a generous and non-discriminatory immigration policy.

Ljudska sloboda i moralna predrasuda

This paper discusses the problem of “moral prejudice” in a democratic society. Moral prejudice is presented as an integral part of the moral norm that is contained in the “social contract” of every nation, which equally implies both written laws and customs of the people. The new, “liberal” moral system, which advocates freedom as the fulfillment of the maximum of human possibilities, and includes as praiseworthy things that the traditional system rejected, is not devoid of prejudice. On the contrary, it comes with a new “prejudice” according to which all traditional morality should be discarded, with extreme condemnation, as oppressive. New moral norms, which did not exist as such in laws and customs, are often imposed by judicial interpretations of key rights and freedoms of citizens. Very often these judicial interpretations rest on the very antipodes of traditional morality and prevailing popular sentiment, so that they come as a fundamental opposition to the “social contract” based on the consent of the people through past, present and future generations. These efforts to impose a new moral system on everyone, regardless of their will, are essentially paternalistic and violent. The true task of a free society is to create pluralism in which different groups will have their right to their own moral system, and in which a new prejudice will not arise under the guise of a universal measure of good human life, which ignores diversity in human experience and worldviews. Keywords: positive liberty, negative liberty, social contract, moral prejudice, sexual morality.

Bewildered and Befuddled

I challenge the dominant Western discourse on China’s rise. This discourse tends to reflect political construction rather than thoughtful scholarship. It is poorly informed by historical evidence and usually evades comparison of China’s conduct with that of other countries, such as the United States, now or in the past. It is also characterized by strong tendencies of groupthink and revisionist scholarship to adjust to prevailing official policies and popular sentiments instead of scrutinizing their validity. This discourse is not only wrong but also dangerous.

Socioreligious Aspects of 217 Women’s Letters in Egypt, 300 BC–AD 800

Abstract Egyptian women’s religious expressions in papyrus letters (Bagnall and Cribiore, 2006) were divided into five categories: None, no god(s) mentioned; Pray, containing “Pray” without gods; Gods, for Greek Gods; Sarapis/local Gods/προσκυνήµα for letters containing prayers in which obeisance before a God is expressed in the Egyptian reverential manner, a προσκυνήµα; Θεός/Κύριος/Χριστός letters to the Christian God. The None category is prevalent during the early 300 BC to 100 AD period followed by an increase in, and then stable, formulaic/religious expressions. The Pray category peaked in the second and third centuries AD, and the Gods category, referring to pagan Gods, showed a steady and significant decline from the first to the fourth century AD inverse to the rise in prevalence of letters in the Θεός/Κύριος/Χριστός category. The shift to monotheism with Christianity is rendered in graphic form, and permits an appreciation of feminine popular sentiment on religion and its Gods in Egypt.