Volume 3, Issue 1

Abstract

Abstract

We examined the validity of 37 sentiment scores based on dictionary-based methods using a large news corpus and demonstrated the risk of generating a spectrum of results with different levels of statistical significance by presenting an analysis of relationships between news sentiment and U.S. presidential approval. We summarize our findings into four best practices: 1) use a suitable sentiment dictionary; 2) do not assume that the validity and reliability of the dictionary is ‘built-in’; 3) check for the influence of content length and 4) do not use multiple dictionaries to test the same statistical hypothesis.

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2021-03-01
2024-03-29
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Keyword(s): agenda setting; news sentiment; p-hacking; sentiment analysis; text-as-data; validity

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