The Pulse of Public Opinion : Using Twitter Data to Analyze Public Perception of Reform in El Salvador
This study uses Twitter data to provide a more nuanced understanding of the public reaction to the 2011 reform to the propane gas subsidy in El Salvador. By soliciting a small sample of manually tagged tweets, the study identifies the subject matte...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/08/24925779/pulse-public-opinion-using-twitter-data-analyze-public-perception-reform-el-salvador http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22656 |
| Summary: | This study uses Twitter data to provide
a more nuanced understanding of the public reaction to the
2011 reform to the propane gas subsidy in El Salvador. By
soliciting a small sample of manually tagged tweets, the
study identifies the subject matter and sentiment of all
tweets during six one-month periods over three years that
concern the subsidy reform. The paper shows that such an
analysis using Twitter data can provide a useful complement
to existing household survey data and even potentially
replace survey data if none were available. The finding show
that when people tweet about the subsidy, they almost always
do so in a negative manner; and there is a decline in
discussion of topics about the reform subsidy, which
coincides with increase in support for the subsidy as
reported elsewhere. Therefore, the study concludes that
decreasing discussion of the subsidy reform indicates an
increase in support for the reform. In addition, the gas
distributor strikes of May 2011 may have contributed to
public perception of the reform more than previously
acknowledged. This study is used as an opportunity to
provide methodological guidance for researchers who wish to
undertake similar studies, documenting the steps in the
analysis pipeline with detail and noting the challenges
inherent in obtaining data, classification, and inference. |
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