Sentiment analysis of political discussion on Twitter in Nigeria's 2019 presidential election

Oni, Aderonke A and Oni, Samuel and Udemezue, Blessing (2022) Sentiment analysis of political discussion on Twitter in Nigeria's 2019 presidential election. HomeInternational Journal of Electronic Governance, 131 (42021). pp. 462-485. ISSN ISSN: 1742-7509  eISSN: 1742-7517

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Abstract

Social media have helped in political communication by reinforcing social change and commitments from governments. This study analyses political discussion on Twitter during the 2019 Nigeria general election. The aim is to identify popular issues discussed and opinion of citizens on popular presidential candidates' social media network and correlate the online discussion with real world events during the 2019 election. Five most popular presidential candidates were selected for the investigation. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model was used to identify frequent terms and topics discussed. Sentiment of the tweets was analysed using National Research Council Canada (NRC) Emotion Lexicon. Findings revealed that Twitter is mainly used for political discussion that cantered on personal representation, political party's promotion and elections matters. The behaviour of users shows that Twitter platform is not being used to share original political ideologies, instead the platform was used for re-tweeting of tweets and political campaigns for candidates.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	social media, election, sentiment analysis, LDA, Latent Dirichlet allocation, emotion lexicon, Nigeria
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General) Q Science > QA Mathematics Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Divisions:	Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Electronics and Computer Science
Depositing User:	Patricia Nwokealisi
Date Deposited:	08 Jul 2024 15:04
Last Modified:	08 Jul 2024 15:04
URI:	http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/18166

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