Hello,
This week I wish to share with you an article about opinion mining:
The article describes what opinion mining is used for and how complex it could be. Opinion mining finds application in wide range of different fields like e-commerce, business, social media, analysis and each creates new challenges. Authors also give an example how it could be used in predicting the stock market. It is interesting how opinions shared by users of web forum discussion can reflect the stock market.
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteOpinion mining is about something I hate - advertisements. It is just great machine where people are manipulated and psychologically tricked to buy things that are endorsed and in 99,9% of cases absolutely not useful, not worth a single penny and will broke in very short period of time. But for some people it is great business, so from marketers point of view it is great tool to trick people even better and to provide with more manipulated opinions in the internet. So for marketers it is great opportunity but huge danger for normal people.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
Because it generates more money for companies? Because producers of products and movies have a lot of money and they are looking for another ways to earn even more. Todays market it very competitive and when it comes to products or movies it is hard to find something “new” or something not seen before. Therefore only opinion mining can improve such products and movies because of people opinions in the internet.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
I might be wrong, but it seems for me that opinion mining is more powerful then traditional survey. It is because survey contains some earlier prepared questions and is very limited with results that it can provide. Opinion mining can give much more informations, people write opinions very often in the internet so there is more opinions to choose from.
Thank you for your comment. I think opinion mining is something different than advertisements. In general it is more about retrieving information why people like or dislike something. In some way it can be used for advertisements, like determining fake opinions or finding which aspects of product will be popular in advertisement.
DeleteNew technologies surprise me again and again and I think in the future they are going to surprise me a lot of times. Your article astonished me because I have never heard about Opinion Mining and their use to collect information about political, social or commercial events. My God! Almost everything what we type via the Internet can be used in different ways. This is not a problem when companies collect opinions used to improve their products or services. The Problem is when for example serious Polish politicians use fake information from the Internet in your debate. That’s why I think Opinion Mining is rather more dangerous for people than a useful issue.
ReplyDeleteI reckon much of current Opinion Mining research focuses on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context because Big Companies sponsor these researches to use to improve the selling ability. Corporations don’t care about social or geopolitical context because it is not fruitful for them.
As for your final question I think Opinion Mining is more fruitful than a traditional survey. During traditional survey people often say hogwash to improve your image. But when people think they are anonymous they can reveal their true faces.
Thank you for your comment. I'm glad that this article presented something new for you. I agree that opinion mining may be dangerous if some politicians use it to cheat their electorate but on the other hand it can be used to verify what people really think.
DeleteI totally agree with ZC that Opinion Mining can be a really dangerous tool of influence. In wrong hands it can do more harm than good. Polish politicians are not sophisticated to take advantage of this tool, but I guess in America it is very useful in campaigns, especially when one intends to discredit his/her opponent. Opinion Mining focuses on products, movie reviews, because this is what brings money and tangible results.Opinion mining of Online content is more efficient than traditional survey, because people tend to be more open if they are certain that they are 100% anonymous.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Yes, it is used in America for example to predict elections on a basis of tweets. It is an interesting example because opinion mining in recent elections wasn't successful. Most researchers predicted Hilary as a winner based on tweeter users opinions.
DeleteI agree with ZC but I don't demonize it like previous colleagues. I encounter more dangerous applications that should be restricted to professional personnel. I don't remember genesis of all opinion services like Opineo or Tweeter but I meet people whose profession was to deal with opinion management. For me this is another tool where I can extract knowledge. Thank Kasia again for SentiWordNet link I believe this might more advanced tool than traditional survey.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your input. I can agree that there are more dangerous applications. I think that some may see opinion mining dangerous because it may inference in privacy and stop people to express their opinions honestly.
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ReplyDelete1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or
dangers?
Reading others peoples comments I found out that is difficult to disagree with them. My opinion is very similar to Czarek ones. Option mining is another marketing tool. As such it creates more opportunities for manipulation.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
Opinion about products, movies etc. are more important for sales peoples. Earning money is the key point.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
Hmmm, look at Dr.House. Everybody is laying. There is no such think as "true" when it comes to the opinions. The same goes with social media. Probably the opinion mining of online content is less expensive than a traditional survey.
Thank you for your comment.This is a good question if there is such thing as "true" in opinions.I think there is because some opinions express not only someone's feelings but also the reasons. For example customers may complain about some aspects of a product but be very satisfy with it in general.
DeleteThank you for a very interesting article.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
The whole concept seems to be interesting, Surely it gives more possibilities, I do not see the dangers here. It is not more dangerous than other analyzes.
Why do you want to focus on products, movie reviews, opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons? I agree with this question from Cezary - it's about money for businesses. It is difficult to be competitive in many fields. The presented method allows you to find small elements to improve sales and increase earnings.
Do you think the mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why / Why not? Once on this formum was discussed about the question (I think so). Surveys must be well built to deliver real results. Anyway, nobody likes filling out Surveys :)
Tanks for your comment. I am happy that you find this article interesting. Yes, no one likes filling out surveys and it is really difficult to create good survey. I think that people are more honest when they write opinion online.
DeleteHello
ReplyDelete1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
It all depends what kind of information you want to collect. We all know that in some cases you can extract directed information from a sample data. It all depends how you introduce them.
There is a big danger in it. I agree with previous comments.
Point is (for example) do governments care opinions? or they want to make sure us they do right? showing us very specific results. It all depends of point of view. Those kind of conclusions should be based on objective methodology which is resistant to manipulations.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
I think it is a firs step. Next will be based on our comments on FB or twitter. The second reason in my opinion is all about the money :)
Lots of people these days are fashion specialist, food bloggers or even iPhone professional photographers... they write for publish. I do not think FB will allow to analyse their data. They do this on their won. I am sure about this.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
The sample rate is far more bigger and this make us thing is more accurate. Point is that the numbers are bigger and this makes them more valuable. Call center usually does about 1000 calls to a group of people and all opinions conclusions are based only on them. In this article authors made mining on over 400000 messages. Someone could find this more trustful.
Thanks for your comment. That is true, FB do not allow to analyse their data except of your pages because they do it on their own and even published some researches about it. On the other side Twitter does allow and their data is analysed by many.
DeleteI think that ZC said almost everything that I think about the subject. But instead being constantly surprised in a negative sense, we should embrace the fact and try to look for some ways to, at least in a small amount, mitigate negative effects of technology (I guess you meant Opinion Creation, not Opinion Mining, when mentioning using fake news). Opinion Creation is more dangerous than Opinion Mining, that's why I want to focus on the automatic credibility assessment in my scientific work. Science should serve better world :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Credibility assessment is also a problem which opinion mining struggle with. There are a lot of fake news, fake opinions etc which has to be identified to make opinion mining worth.
Delete1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteTechnological tools can help people to achieve goals. If your target will be bad in example you want to be very important politician to take a control in the country… opinion mining probably can help you (maybe not now, but in the future when implemented algorithms will be more sophisticated).
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
I am not an expert in an opinion mining field but more important for reasearchers is access to real world data. I believe it is much easier to get access to the data avaiable in websites with user opinions, than more specialized area where quality of the data included into the opinion might be higher, but their quantity won't. A lot of people share their opinions about movies, musics, politics even they do not have experience and knowledge to make it in professional way. They just sharing their personal feelings in specified topic.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
Yes, until people feels anonymous in the network. They publish their everything that crosses their minds. And it is very deep in their minds ;)
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to answer to that question. In some cases the opportunities are obvious but in other there are a lot of possible dangers to.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
I think this is more difficult because of cultural difference and lack of solid machine rearing methods for natural languages different than english.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
Because surveys are really hard to be engaging for there surveyed person. If nobody in pushing human to answer people are getting creative, natural and kind of honest.
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteThis is not a question that we can make a concrete answer. It creates a lot of new opportunities. For example, better information aggregation will make the offer presented to the customer much better and much more precise. There is also a downside. More information about us are gathered by different companies.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
First of all we have much more opinions about such trivial things like movies or a new watch. Secondly opinions about politics etc are much harder to interpret. Often their meaning is based on external information and context of the related situation.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
Yes, of course. We can parse and analyze much faster a bigger set of data
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteI hate advertising, any kind of spying and so on. However, building opinion databases can be useful to provide better content and so on. Sadly, it can be used as a generator tool for fake shops and so on.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
So many questions in a single point. Answer to your questions is simple, because we have far more data about it.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
It isn't more efficient. Especially if you take a look at the quality. In traditional surveys you have a lot of questions and in most cases you must answer them. Online, people tend to provide poor quality feedback.
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ReplyDeleteI think that opinion mining is something like elections – you don’t have your favourite candidate, but you have to vote. Here, there are a lot of dangers and avoiding participating in such processes is very tempting. On the other hand – contemporary world functions like that and there some activities you just can’t realize in a different way. I mean losing information existing only in internet, I am for using it consciously and having it under control.
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In my opinion most of it focuses on products and film reviews, because these are the cases when someone can earn money. And it reminds me TV program and popular newspapers or magazines for women, where you can find first of all a lot of descriptions of different products, many commercial oriented articles and of course advertisements. So opinion mining concentrated on products etc. is coherent to the rest of our “media world” and money-focused reality.
Social or geopolitical problems in a, let’s say, valuable edition, is very difficult to meet, similarly like honest and impartial information. This is a challenge for ambitious people to find it.
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I don’t think you should compare efficiency of those two ways. I think only combining both of them can give total and real information. And it concerns every kind of content, only proportions can be different. Online content is easier to investigate thanks to online mining, obviously, but I suppose traditional survey (for example newspaper articles, interviews or other kind of “in vivo” research) can be very inspiring also for this subject.
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I think that opinion mining is inevitable solution. People who runs businesses operating in area of analysing social/ single consumer's opinions would like to reduce costs. If it is good or not? It depends if you are "owner" or worker. In first case you will earn more, but in second you'll lose your job.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
For people who need this kind of analysis/opinions important thing is how much money can they earn having new knowledge. I think some areas of research are less valuable in "dollar" terms. The question is if it is the best measure?
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
I'm totally convinced it will be more efficient. Collecting data is much cheaper. Moreover after improvement of applied algorithms one researcher will be able to get more detailed knowledge about people, based on their true activities not only on prepared, written opinions.
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteI think that opinion mining can create opportunities, but also dangers. Thanks to the opinion mining we can gather the knowlegde about many subjects and the society opinions and thoughts, but when it will be performed on not representative source of opinion it may bring false results. And as every process based on information also opinion mining can collect data, that not everybody would like to share with the opinion mining companies.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
Probably there is more data available for products and movie reviews. I think that everybody knows and uses databases of movie reviews. The products, e.g. cosmetics are very often evaluated and described on the web portals. The social nad geopolitical subjects might be less discussed and the analysis of such opinion might be more difficult, because usually they are not described in as simple and unequivocal way as products.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
It depends on a survey. Sometimes survey do not encourage respondents to say the truth, but from the other side, the survey might collect more detailed and precise information. So my answer to the above question is: "It depends."
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteIt is not my cup of tea but I think that it has advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion the most important advantage is support for the personalization process of IT devices. It can just help to personalize the settings. On the other hand it aids advertising – and issue really hated by users.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
First of all it’s easy to find products reviews because we like to give and share such information and there is a lot of such data. Moreover it is more difficult to talk about social or geopolitical issues. So I think that both factors have an impact on focusing on products.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
It depends on the context. In terms of the speed of data collection and analysis – for sure it is more efficient. However, in terms of data quality, opinion mining is less efficient than a traditional survey. I think that in order to obtain good research results these two techniques should be somehow combined.
1. What do you think about opinion mining? Does it create more opportunities or dangers?
ReplyDeleteI think that opinion mining is a next natural phenomenon in data mining. People eagerly share their opinion in social media, on forums or any other sites. A great example of the usage of opinion mining is last presidential election. I have somewhere read that electoral committees where knocking at doors of the residents who were still hesitating.
2. Why do much of current opinion mining research focus on products, movie reviews than on opinions in social or geopolitical context? Is it less important? More difficult? Other reasons?
Regarding what I have mentioned I don't think that opinion mining in social or geopolitical context is less important. I think it is not so publicised. It is hard for me to indicate which market is more valuable.
3. Do you think opinion mining of online content is more efficient than a traditional survey? Why/Why not?
I am quite sure it is more efficient. This data is already somewhere collected so one has only to pay for the access. The process of collecting data seems to be cheaper as well as faster. This data reflect the true state, not the declared activities.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the interesting article. A few years ago I attended a meeting on detailed methods of opinion poll, These researches operate on a rule: start with a few questions and dig deeper. If the respondent agrees, the interview is filmed. The purpose of filming is usually to look up moments of nervousness to find the other true source of the decision. Such tactics are used more and more often to make the best use of the product to meet customers expectations - even with the least significant features of the product - so are the world's manufacturers of reputable companies.Similar surveys are available online. I am thinking that they are less effective in terms of the person being examined, of course they are much cheaper to carry out. Research focuses on consumer issues because it gives you the most profits, and politicians are also interested in the voters opinion one year before the election. And when they listen to us - I do not know ...
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