Blog: Carnegie Mellon Study of Twitter Sentiments Yields Results Similar to Public Opinion Polls

Carnegie Mellon Study of Twitter Sentiments Yields Results Similar to Public Opinion Polls
Carnegie Mellon News (05/11/10) Spice, Byron

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers analyzed the sentiments expressed in a billion Twitter messages during 2008-2009 relating to consumer confidence and presidential job approval ratings and found that they were similar to those of well-established public opinion polls. The research suggests that studying tweets could become an inexpensive, rapid way of gauging public opinion on some subjects, says CMU professor Noah Smith. "With seven million or more messages being tweeted each day, this data stream potentially allows us to take the temperature of the population very quickly," Smith says. The Twitter-derived sentiment measurements were much more volatile day-to-day than the polling data, but when the researchers looked at the results over a period of days, they often correlated closely with the polling data. The researchers say that improved natural-language processing tools, query-driven analysis, and the use of demographic and time stamp data could enhance the sophistication and reliability of the measurements.

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