The Pulse of Public Opinion : Using Twitter Data to Analyze Public Perception of Reform in El Salvador

Seabold, Skipper ; Rutherford, Alex ; De Backer, Olivia ; Coppola, Andrea

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: INFERENCE;    DISCUSSION;    PRESENTATIONS;    E-MAIL;    PUBLIC PERCEPTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7399
RP-ID  :  WPS7399

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This study uses Twitter data to providea more nuanced understanding of the public reaction to the2011 reform to the propane gas subsidy in El Salvador. Bysoliciting a small sample of manually tagged tweets, thestudy identifies the subject matter and sentiment of alltweets during six one-month periods over three years thatconcern the subsidy reform. The paper shows that such ananalysis using Twitter data can provide a useful complementto existing household survey data and even potentiallyreplace survey data if none were available. The finding showthat when people tweet about the subsidy, they almost alwaysdo so in a negative manner; and there is a decline indiscussion of topics about the reform subsidy, whichcoincides with increase in support for the subsidy asreported elsewhere. Therefore, the study concludes thatdecreasing discussion of the subsidy reform indicates anincrease in support for the reform. In addition, the gasdistributor strikes of May 2011 may have contributed topublic perception of the reform more than previouslyacknowledged. This study is used as an opportunity toprovide methodological guidance for researchers who wish toundertake similar studies, documenting the steps in theanalysis pipeline with detail and noting the challengesinherent in obtaining data, classification, and inference.