tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/sentiment-analysis-13227/articlesSentiment analysis – The Conversation2022-05-12T00:47:41Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825172022-05-12T00:47:41Z2022-05-12T00:47:41ZAI, philosophy and religion: what machine learning can tell us about the Bhagavad Gita<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462366/original/file-20220511-22-g63bhm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=164%2C116%2C1601%2C970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita#/media/File:BhagavadGita-19th-century-Illustrated-Sanskrit-Chapter_1.20.21.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Machine learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) methods have had immense success with scientific and technical tasks such as predicting how protein molecules fold and recognising faces in a crowd. However, the application of these methods to the humanities are yet to be fully explored. </p>
<p>What can AI tell us about philosophy and religion, for example? As a starting point for such an exploration, we used deep learning AI methods to <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9715095">analyse English translations of the Bhagavad Gita</a>, an ancient Hindu text written originally in Sanskrit.</p>
<p>Using a deep learning-based language model called BERT, we studied sentiment (emotions) and semantics (meanings) in the translations. Despite huge variations in vocabulary and sentence structure, we found that the patterns of emotion and meaning were broadly similar in all three.</p>
<p>This research opens a path to the use of AI-based technologies for comparing translations and reviewing sentiments in a wide range of texts.</p>
<h2>An ancient book of wisdom</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita">Bhagavad Gita</a> is one of the central Hindu sacred and philosophical texts. Written more than 2,000 years ago, it has been translated into more than 100 languages and has been of interest to western philosophers since the 18th century.</p>
<p>The 700-verse poem is a part of the larger <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata">Mahabharata</a> epic, which recounts the events of an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurukshetra_War">ancient war</a> believed to have occurred at Kurukshetra near modern-day Delhi in India.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indian-philosophy-helps-us-see-clearly-act-wisely-in-an-interconnected-world-135412">Indian philosophy helps us see clearly, act wisely in an interconnected world</a>
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<p>The text of the Bhagavad Gita relates a conversation between the Hindu deity Lord Krishna and a prince called Arjuna. They discuss whether a soldier should go to war for ethics and duty (or “dharma”) if they have close friends or family on the opposing side. </p>
<p>The text has been instrumental in laying the foundations of Hinduism. Among many other things, it is where the philosophy of karma (a spiritual principle of cause and effect) originates. </p>
<p>Scholars have also regarded the Bhagavad Gita as a book of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0975156420120102">psychology</a>, management, <a href="https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJICBM.2018.088593">leadership</a> and conflict resolution. </p>
<h2>Countless translations</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1269&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462359/original/file-20220511-22-a73evc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1269&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The first of many English translations of the Bhagavad Gita was published in 1785.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita#/media/File:1785_Bhagavad_Gita_translation_English.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>There have been countless English translations of the Bhagavad Gita, but there is not much work that validates their quality. Translations of songs and poems not only break rhythm and rhyming patterns, but can also result in the loss of semantic information. </p>
<p>In our research, we used deep learning language models to analyse three selected translations of the Bhagavad Gita (from Sanskrit to English) with semantic and sentiment analyses which help in the evaluation of translation quality. </p>
<p>We used a pre-trained language model known as <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04805v2">BERT</a>, developed by Google. We further tuned the model using a human-labelled training dataset based on Twitter posts, which captures 10 different sentiments.</p>
<p>These sentiments (optimistic, thankful, empathetic, pessimistic, anxious, sad, annoyed, denial, surprise, and joking) were adopted from our previous research into <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0255615">social media sentiment</a> during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461889/original/file-20220509-15-kmhzr9.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A schematic diagram showing how the AI analysis works.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9715095">Chandra</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Patterns of sentiment</h2>
<p>The three translations we studied used very different vocabulary and syntax, but the language model recognised similar sentiments in the different chapters of the respective translations. According to our model, optimistic, annoyed and surprised sentiments are the most expressed. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461888/original/file-20220509-21-pxw5zt.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=831&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sentiments captured by our language model for different translations of the Bhagavad Gita.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9715095">Chandra and Kulkarni</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Moreover, the model showed how the overall sentiment polarity changes (from negative to positive) over the course of the conversation between Arjuna and Lord Krishna. </p>
<p>Arjuna is pessimistic towards the beginning and becomes optimistic as Lord Krisha imparts knowledge of Hindu philosophy to him. The sentiments expressed by Krishna show that with philosophical knowledge of dharma and mentorship, a troubled mind can get clarity for making the right decisions in times of conflict. </p>
<p>One limitation of our model is that it was trained on data from Twitter, so it recognises “joking” as a common sentiment. It applies this label inappropriately to some parts of the Bhagavad Gita. Humour is complicated and strongly culturally constrained, and understanding it is too much to ask of our model at this stage.</p>
<p>Due to the nature of the Sanskrit language, the fact that the Bhagavad Gita is a song with rhythm and rhyme, and the varied dates of the translations, different translators used different vocabulary to describe the same concepts.</p>
<p>The table below shows some of the most semantically similar verses from the three translations. </p>
<p><iframe id="1ZUL9" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/1ZUL9/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>The uses of sentiment analysis</h2>
<p>Our research points the way to the use of AI-based technologies for comparing translations and reviewing sentiments in a wide range of texts. </p>
<p>This technology can also be extended to review sentiments expressed in entertainment media. Another potential application is analysing movies and songs to provide insights to parents and authorities about the suitability of content for children. </p>
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<p><em>The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of Venkatesh Kulkarni to this research.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rohitash Chandra receives funding from NHMRC and ARC - ITTC Data Analytics for Resources and Environments</span></em></p>Using machine learning, we analysed meaning and feeling in different translations of an ancient Hindu holy text.Rohitash Chandra, Senior Lecturer, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1478392020-10-16T02:21:37Z2020-10-16T02:21:37ZHow’s your life under lockdown? Tweets tell the tale of how neighbourhoods compare<p>Melbourne has endured one of the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/is-melbourne-s-coronavirus-lockdown-really-the-longest-in-the-world-here-s-how-other-countries-stack-up">strictest COVID-19 lockdowns</a> in the world. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-06/coronavirus-restrictions-victorian-government-may-extend-5km/12732058">Public health announcements</a> indicate restrictions are set to continue despite <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-14-day-rolling-average-of-5-new-daily-cases-is-the-wrong-trigger-for-easing-melbourne-lockdown-lets-look-at-under-investigation-cases-instead-147906">experts warning</a> that Victoria is unlikely to get the daily average number of new cases down to just five in the near future. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.monash.edu/mada/research/evaluating-neighbourhood-sentiment">Our research</a> shows some people lack access to the essential services and amenities that support healthy and liveable places during the lockdown. We tracked 80,000 location-based tweets from January 2020 to September 2020 to understand how people are responding to Melbourne’s lockdowns. </p>
<p>Social media such as <a href="https://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> can provide a window into how people are emotionally managing during the lockdown and how well their neighbourhood meets their needs in this challenging time. This is particularly important as policy conversations turn to the importance of 20-minute neighbourhoods and living locally in the post-COVID city.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-love-the-idea-of-20-minute-neighbourhoods-so-why-isnt-it-top-of-the-agenda-131193">People love the idea of 20-minute neighbourhoods. So why isn't it top of the agenda?</a>
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<p>Research has shown the inequality of neighbourhood access to services and amenities can have serious <a href="https://theconversation.com/walking-and-cycling-to-work-makes-commuters-happier-and-more-productive-117819">physical</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/parks-and-green-spaces-are-important-for-our-mental-health-but-we-need-to-make-sure-that-everyone-can-benefit-142322">mental health</a> impacts. These differences raise issues of equity and whether <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/10/the-new-covid-normal-is-victoria-ready-to-come-out-of-lockdown">responses are proportionate</a> to the threat. It also means some neighbourhoods are ill-equipped to support the anticipated increase in people working from home during and after the pandemic.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-cities-are-full-of-parks-so-why-are-we-looking-to-golf-courses-for-more-open-space-147559">Our cities are full of parks, so why are we looking to golf courses for more open space?</a>
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<h2>Life under lockdown isn’t the same for all</h2>
<p>On August 2, the Victorian government established strict restrictions on movement including a 5km travel bubble and curfew in Melbourne. In a cross-discipline collaboration between Monash’s Art, Design & Architecture and Data Futures Institute, our analysis of Twitter data focused on neighbourhood amenity and opportunity at this point. Our findings reveal the differences in resident well-being across different suburbs during lockdown.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Entrance to Luna Park in St Kilda" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363113/original/file-20201013-17-fxgfaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Residents of the suburb of St Kilda have been more likely to keep smiling under lockdown than the city as a whole.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexa Gower</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>With the introduction of the first lockdown, the number of tweets posted about people’s local neighbourhoods increased by 158% compared to January and February 2020. This highlights how the lockdown turned people’s attention towards their residential area. It also indicates neighbourhood amenities became more significant for people who are no longer commuting to work in Melbourne’s CBD or other places. </p>
<p>People living in areas with poor access to amenities expressed higher levels of negative sentiment about their neighbourhood during the lockdown periods. Sentiment in these areas dropped three times in the year. There was a 13% drop in sentiment in March when the first lockdown came in and another 15.5% fall with the June lockdown 2.0. Sentiment continued to fall by 30% in August. </p>
<p>In contrast, tweets about amenity-rich areas revealed a 4% rise in positive sentiment. These residents detailed how their neighbourhood amenity helped their well-being during this time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing trends in positive sentiments in tweets from high- and low-amenity areas" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=185&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363614/original/file-20201015-21-1apbv62.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=233&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We see contrasting trends in sentiment in tweets from high-amenity and low-amenity neighbourhoods under lockdown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-posts-show-that-people-are-profoundly-sad-and-are-visiting-parks-to-cheer-up-139953">Twitter posts show that people are profoundly sad – and are visiting parks to cheer up</a>
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<h2>Missing aspects of going to work</h2>
<p>We also see that not everyone is as supportive of remote working arrangements as some <a href="https://theconversation.com/remote-working-is-here-to-stay-but-that-doesnt-mean-the-end-of-offices-or-city-centres-145414">studies claim</a>. Before the lockdown, tweets about places in Melbourne often highlighted satisfaction with working environments. These tweets spoke of walking between meetings, and places to gather and eat out: </p>
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<p>Beautiful day in the city – just perfect for walking between meetings and lunch at the cafe. (Outer Melbourne, March 6).</p>
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<p>Under lockdown, the number of tweets with negative sentiment about residential neighbourhoods throughout Melbourne increased by 124%. People posted negative opinions about what was missing from their local area and expressed longing for the amenities found in their workplace. People also missed their daily commute and the opportunity to walk between places outside their neighbourhood: </p>
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<p>Although I’m loving working from home, one thing that I really miss is my walk to the office from the station. (Outer Melbourne, July 9). </p>
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<p>Moreover, tweets highlighted that some people don’t have enough space to work from home </p>
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<p>When I am working at home I’m currently sharing space with the indoor clothes hangers. (Outer Melbourne, April 16).</p>
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<p>These tweets remind us of the challenges some people face when working from home and indicate how commuting enables access to amenities that their neighbourhoods lack. </p>
<h2>Some areas make work from home a joy</h2>
<p>In comparison, tweets that expressed positive neighbourhood sentiment during the lockdown referred specifically to the benefits of parks and public facilities. In high-amenity areas, people expressed gratitude for these places. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Social isolating done right … I’m so #grateful to have these sort of parks right on my doorstep so I can exercise both me and the dogs 🙂🐕 (Inner Melbourne, March 29)</p>
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<p>Being able to experience the natural environment improved their mood. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I went outside for a walk and took a moment to stand in a spot where the onshore bay breeze could freely hit me in the face while I listened to <em>Sign ☮️ the Times</em>. I needed that so badly. #starfishandcoffee’ (Inner Melbourne, April 16)</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/parks-and-green-spaces-are-important-for-our-mental-health-but-we-need-to-make-sure-that-everyone-can-benefit-142322">Parks and green spaces are important for our mental health – but we need to make sure that everyone can benefit</a>
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<p>Some were happy to spend more time locally even when lockdown measures had eased. </p>
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<p>The joys of working from home and walking to support our local coffee shop. Then you are pleasantly surprised by Teddy and his marmalade skills. Just sweet! (Outer Melbourne, May 27)</p>
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<p>Increased positive sentiment about local amenity continued longer into the year than negative tweets, highlighting the broad benefits local amenities provide to communities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing sentiment trends for Sandringham, St Kilda and Greater Melbourne." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=139&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=139&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=174&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=174&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/363616/original/file-20201015-15-13kaufp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=174&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How people fare under lockdown has a lot to do with where they live.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Work to be done on neighbourhood amenity</h2>
<p>Comparing Melbourne’s Twitter data across different places provides insight into the impacts of neighbourhood amenity on resident well-being during lockdown. It also shows the uneven access to important neighbourhood facilities in different places and the consequences for remote working. </p>
<p>The lockdown experience highlights that if Melbourne is serious about achieving a city of 20-minute neighbourhoods, there is immediate work to do to improve access to everyday amenities and support remote working.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reclaiming-the-streets-we-all-can-have-a-say-in-the-new-normal-after-coronavirus-137703">Reclaiming the streets? We all can have a say in the 'new normal' after coronavirus</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Grodach receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dickson Lukose receives funding from Australian Research Council, and Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Malaysia. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Webb receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexa Gower and Liton Kamruzzaman do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The differences in sentiment in areas of high and low neighbourhood amenity have been clear under Melbourne’s tough COVID restrictions. It’s further evidence of the impacts of inequity on well-being.Alexa Gower, Postdoctoral researcher, Monash UniversityCarl Grodach, Professor and Director of Urban Planning & Design, Monash UniversityDickson Lukose, Professor and Senior Data Scientist, Data Futures Institute, Monash UniversityGeoff Webb, Professor and Research Director, Data Futures Institute, Monash UniversityLiton Kamruzzaman, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1271192019-11-19T02:29:42Z2019-11-19T02:29:42ZDon’t (just) blame echo chambers. Conspiracy theorists actively seek out their online communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302333/original/file-20191119-169352-sm1eeg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C1%2C1017%2C669&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The term illuminati has been used since the late 15th century, and applied to various groups since then. It's often discussed by conspiracy theorists, and is heavily referenced in pop-culture.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/53314395@N00/4655060593/">Lettuce./Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why do people believe conspiracy theories? Is it because of who they are, what they’ve encountered, or a combination of both? </p>
<p>The answer is important. Belief in conspiracy theories helps <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-for-climate-change-only-feeds-the-denial-how-do-you-beat-that-52813">fuel climate change denial</a>, anti-vaccination stances, <a href="https://theconversation.com/conspiracy-theories-fuel-prejudice-towards-minority-groups-113508">racism</a>, and distrust of the media and science.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225098">paper published today</a>, we shed light on the online world of conspiracy theorists, by studying a large set of user comments. </p>
<p>Our key findings are that people who eventually engage with conspiracy forums differ from those who don’t in both where and what they post. The patterns of difference suggest they actively seek out sympathetic communities, rather than passively stumbling into problematic beliefs.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-short-history-of-vaccine-objection-vaccine-cults-and-conspiracy-theories-78842">A short history of vaccine objection, vaccine cults and conspiracy theories</a>
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<p>We looked at eight years of comments posted on the popular website <a href="https://reddit.com">Reddit</a>, a platform hosting millions of individual forums called subreddits. </p>
<p>Our aim was to find out the main differences between users who post in r/conspiracy (a subreddit dedicated to conspiracy theories) and other Reddit users.</p>
<p>Using a technique called <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/sentiment-analysis-concept-analysis-and-applications-6c94d6f58c17">sentiment analysis</a> we examined what users said, and where they said it, during the months before their first post in r/conspiracy. </p>
<p>We compared these posts to those of other users who started posting on Reddit at the same time, and in the same subreddits, but without going on to post in r/conspiracy.</p>
<p>We then constructed a network of the subreddits through which r/conspiracy posters travelled. In doing so, we were able to discover how and why they reached their destination. </p>
<h2>Seeking the like-minded</h2>
<p>Our research suggests there is evidence for the “self-selection” of conspiracy theorists. This means users appear to be seeking communities of people who share their views.</p>
<p>Users followed clear pathways to eventually reach r/conspiracy. </p>
<p>For example, these users were over-represented in subreddits focused on politics, drugs and internet culture, and engaged with such topics more often than their matched pairs. </p>
<p>We were also surprised by the diversity of pathways taken to get to r/conspiracy. The users were not as concentrated on one side of the political spectrum as people might expect. Nor did we find more anxiety in their posts, compared with other users.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00189/full">previous research</a> also indicated online conspiracy theorists are more <a href="http://theconversation.com/online-conspiracy-theorists-are-more-diverse-and-ordinary-than-most-assume-92022">diverse and ordinary</a> than most people assume.</p>
<h2>Where do the beliefs come from?</h2>
<p>To dig deeper, we examined the interactions between where and what r/conspiracy users posted. </p>
<p>In political subreddits, the language used by them and their matched pairs was quite similar. However, in Reddit’s very popular general-purpose subreddits, the linguistic differences between the two groups were striking. </p>
<p>So far, psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have struggled to find anything distinct about conspiracy believers or their environments. </p>
<p>Social media can play a role in spreading conspiracy theories, but it mostly entrenches beliefs among those who already have them. Thus it can be challenging to measure and understand how conspiracy beliefs arise. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-internet-fuels-conspiracy-theories-but-not-in-the-way-you-might-imagine-98037">The internet fuels conspiracy theories – but not in the way you might imagine</a>
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<p>Traditional survey and interview approaches don’t always give reliable responses. This is because conspiracy theorists often frame their life in narratives of <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00861/full">conversation and awakening</a>, which can obscure the more complex origins of their beliefs. </p>
<p>Furthermore, as philosopher David Coady <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-conspiracy-theories-and-why-the-term-is-a-misnomer-101678">pointed out</a>, some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Insiders do sometimes uncover evidence of malfeasance and cover-ups, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-richard-boyle-and-witness-k-to-media-raids-its-time-whistleblowers-had-better-protection-121555">recent debates over the need for whistleblower protections in Australia</a> reflect.</p>
<h2>Echo chambers worsen the problem</h2>
<p>Research about online radicalisation from philosophy has focused on the passive effects of technologies such as <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association/article/technological-seduction-and-selfradicalization/47CADB240E6141F9C6160C40BC9A6ECF">recommended algorithms</a> and their role in creating <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult">online echo chambers</a>. </p>
<p>Our research instead suggests individuals seem to have a more active role in finding like-minded communities, before their interactions in such communities reinforce their beliefs. </p>
<p>These “person-situation interactions” are clearly important and under-theorised. </p>
<p>As the psychologist David C. Funder <a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Handbook-of-Personality/John-Robins-Pervin/9781609180591/contents">puts it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Individuals do not just passively find themselves in the situations of their lives; they often actively seek and choose them. Thus, while a certain kind of bar may tend to generate a situation that creates fights around closing time, only a certain kind of person will choose to go to that kind of bar in the first place. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We suspect a similar process leads users to conspiracy forums. </p>
<h2>A complex web of interactions</h2>
<p>Our data indicates that conspiracy beliefs, like most beliefs, are not adopted in a vacuum. They are actively mulled over, discussed, and sought out by agents in a social (and increasingly online) world.</p>
<p>And when forums like <a href="https://theconversation.com/8chans-demise-is-a-win-against-hate-but-could-drive-extremists-to-the-dark-web-121521">8chan and Stormfront are pushed offline</a>, users often look for other ways to communicate. </p>
<p>These complex interactions are growing in number, and technology can amplify their effects.</p>
<p>YouTube radicalisation, for example, is likely driven by interactions between algorithms and <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-just-blame-youtubes-algorithms-for-radicalisation-humans-also-play-a-part-125494">self-selected communities</a>.</p>
<p>When it comes to conspiracy beliefs, more work needs to be done to understand the interplay between a person’s social environment and their information seeking behaviour. </p>
<p>And this becomes even more pressing as we learn more about the risks that come with conspiracy theorising.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-conspiracy-theories-arent-harmless-fun-43923">Why conspiracy theories aren’t harmless fun</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Klein receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Dunn receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, and the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, United States.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Clutton receives funding from Australian Government Research Training Program. </span></em></p>We analysed eight years of Reddit posts from conspiracy theorists. Our findings have helped debunk some common myths about this somewhat alienated group of people.Colin Klein, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian National UniversityAdam Dunn, Associate professor, Macquarie UniversityPeter Clutton, Graduate Student in Philosophy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/952902018-05-07T20:10:17Z2018-05-07T20:10:17ZTweet all about it – people in parks feel more positive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216802/original/file-20180430-135817-100jub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C70%2C3581%2C1785&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Being in a park tends to make people feel more positive, although the time of day and the season also affect their moods.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-woman-use-mobile-phone-countryside-1073482613?src=csbOCN4JjkFr3qRhpSDxHA-2-3">leungchopan/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People in parks are more positive, and around areas like major transport hubs more negative, according to our analysis of 2.2 million tweets in Melbourne.</p>
<p><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/limkwanhui/publications/2018-WWW-greenspaceStudy.pdf">Our research</a> combines social media, such as Twitter, and big data analytics, tied to real time and place, to develop understanding of the well-being benefits of city parks. <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/limkwanhui/publications/2018-WWW-greenspaceStudy.pdf">The analysis</a> shows that tweets in parks contain more positive content (and less negativity) than in built-up areas. For built-up areas in general, negativity is often associated with major transport hubs, perhaps unsurprisingly, and residential areas.</p>
<p>Around the world we are seeking to improve the <a href="https://www.healthybydesignsa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Green-Spaces-Evidence-Review-FINAL_website.pdf">well-being of people living in cities</a>. One way we do this is by providing public access to natural green spaces such as parks. But how do we assess the benefits and identify which parks, and which elements of a park, best promote well-being?</p>
<p>To date, researchers have examined the well-being benefits of parks using intrusive questionnaires, interviews and physiological <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204611003665">tests</a> (e.g. skin conductance, heart rate). We now have <a href="https://networkedsociety.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/2016/urban-green-spaces/social-networks-urban-green-spaces">technology</a>, including smartphones, apps and social media posts, that we can use to observe these benefits in detail, across very large scales. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216984/original/file-20180501-135848-e8w70c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A lot of people send a lot of messages and analysis of these can tell us about the impact of their surroundings on how they feel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanh1/9546522671">Dun.can/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our findings add to the evidence that parks are important for creating smarter, healthier and more liveable cities. </p>
<h2>How do we measure well-being in parks?</h2>
<p>Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Twitter for updating their family, friends and followers about their daily activities, thoughts and feelings. People sometimes post public tweets that are linked to the location they are sending from. The words in each tweet can be analysed for their emotional content (referred to as sentiment).</p>
<p>Sentiment analysis categorises each word as positive, negative or neutral, to give an overall score for each tweet. We averaged tweets across the parks that they were posted from, to give an overall positivity/negativity score for each park. </p>
<p>On average, tweets by people in parks express more joy, anticipation and trust, and lower levels of anger and fear, compared to tweets by people in built-up areas. Being near parks also reduced negativity, but did not affect positivity. </p>
<h2>Do time of day and seasons have an effect?</h2>
<p>Each tweet is tagged with the time it’s posted. Tweet sentiment scores can also be averaged across specific periods, such as hour, day or month. Beyond the general positive effects of parks compared to built-up areas, we found some general patterns that show people tend to be influenced by the time they are tweeting.</p>
<p>Across the day, from lunch to the end of the work day, people tended to express less and less positivity, before bouncing back in the evening. This change seems to mirror general schooling and working life – that is, <a href="http://www.uvm.edu/%7Ecdanfort/press/Science-2011-Miller-1814-5.pdf">how people experience and recover from their work</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/216987/original/file-20180501-135844-181844i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=944&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Spending a warm day off in the park certainly seems to lift people’s mood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnloo/14928176288">John Loo/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, there is a general pattern of people being more positive on weekends than weekdays. While this pattern is similar for both parks and built-up areas, parks seem more positive than built-up areas regardless of the day of week.</p>
<p>Across seasons, from warmer months to cooler months, people tended to express more positivity in parks. Positivity seems to improve steadily from May to December, as we move from winter to summer in Australia. In contrast, built-up areas do not seem to show any clear patterns. </p>
<h2>Why are people happier in parks?</h2>
<p>People <a href="http://parkrxamerica.org/pdf/Hartig-2016-Living-in-cities-naturally.pdf">might be happier in parks</a> for several reasons. Parks can help them to recover from the stress and mental strain of living in cities, and provide a place to exercise, meet other people, or host special events such as music festivals.</p>
<p>We need to do more research to help us understand the effect of park features. For example, being green with lots of vegetation is likely related to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesis">biophilia</a>. And how do the effects differ when parks are used as settings for particular activities? </p>
<p>We know parks are great places, but we are still working out exactly why they’re great. Knowing more about this will help us make even better parks. Making the best use of public open space and green space is <a href="http://indicators.report/indicators/i-70/">really important</a> as more and more people live in cities around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kwan Hui Lim receives funding from Melbourne Networked Society Institute and Defence Science and Technology Group.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dave Kendal receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the federal Department of the Environment, the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, the City of Melbourne, the Melbourne Networked Society Institute and the Glenelg Hopkins and Corangamite Catchment Management Authorities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Lee receives funding from the the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program through the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, the Melbourne Networked Society Institute, Horticulture Innovation Australia, the Upper Stony Creek Transformation Consortium, and Parks Victoria. </span></em></p>The positive mood of tweets varies with time of day and season, but it’s consistently higher in parks than in built-up areas, where people are more likely to express anger and fears.Kwan Hui Lim, Research Fellow, The University of MelbourneDave Kendal, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management, University of TasmaniaKate Lee, Research fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/774012017-05-22T05:55:46Z2017-05-22T05:55:46ZExplainer: how the internet knows if you’re happy or sad<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170088/original/file-20170519-12257-1fa2ude.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With the right algorithm, scientists can detect how you feel through your Facebook posts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/jelenia-gora-poland-february-25-2016-381876439?src=y1-bJ_y8No37J1ydnWVAmQ-2-63">Bakhur Nick/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Think about what you shared with your friends on Facebook today. Was it feelings of “stress” or “failure”, or perhaps “joy”, “love” or “excitement”? Each time we post on social media, we leave traces of our mood. </p>
<p>Our emotions are valuable commodities, and many companies are developing automated tools to recognise them in a process known as sentiment analysis.</p>
<p>Recently, a leaked report <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/digital/facebook-targets-insecure-young-people-to-sell-ads/news-story/a89949ad016eee7d7a61c3c30c909fa6">revealed</a> that Facebook can identify when young people are feeling vulnerable, although the company has <a href="https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/comments-on-research-and-ad-targeting/">insisted it did not use the analysis</a> to target users with advertising. Facebook <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users">also apologised</a> in 2014 for an <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.html">experiment</a> on “emotional contagion” in which posts with either “positive” or “negative” sentiment were filtered from users’ feeds.</p>
<p>Clearly, the ability to detect emotion from text is of great interest to social media companies, as well as advertisers. But how does sentiment analysis work, why is it useful and what are the dangers?</p>
<h2>How does sentiment analysis work?</h2>
<p>While the details of Facebook’s algorithm are not publicly known, most sentiment analysis techniques fall into two categories: supervised or unsupervised. </p>
<p>Supervised methods rely on labelled data. In other words, these are posts that have been classified manually as containing positive or negative sentiment. </p>
<p>Statistical methods are then used to train models to classify new posts automatically based on the presence of pre-identified words or phrases – “stressed” or “relaxed”, for example.</p>
<p>Unsupervised methods, on the other hand, often rely on building a dictionary of scores for different words. <a href="http://hedonometer.org/words.html">One such dictionary</a> developed by my collaborators asked people to give a 1 to 9 happiness score to different words, and then averaged the results: “rainbows”, for example, scored 8.06, while “useless” gets 2.52. </p>
<iframe id="datawrapper-chart-2LK6k" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2LK6k/6/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="526"></iframe>
<p>The overall sentiment of a phrase can then be scored by looking at all the words in the post. For example, the average score for the post “My momma always said ‘life is like a box of chocolates’” is an above-average 6.02, according to this dictionary, suggesting it expresses a positive feeling.</p>
<h2>What is sentiment analysis used for?</h2>
<p>Marketers increasingly use sentiment analysis to <a href="https://medium.com/on-advertising/marketing-sentiment-analysis-and-social-media-behavior-b7b545109261">study trends and make product recommendations</a>. </p>
<p>Imagine a new mobile phone is released; a sentiment analysis of social media posts about the phone may give a company valuable, real-time insight into how it’s performing.</p>
<p>Sentiment analysis has broader applications too. Researchers have recently <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/04/30/526106612/what-we-learned-about-the-mood-of-trumps-tweets">tracked Donald Trump’s Twitter sentiment over the first 100 days of his presidency</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/02/04/513469456/when-trump-tweets-this-bot-makes-money">built bots to place market trades</a> when he tweets positively or negatively about specific companies.</p>
<p>Scientists can track emotional trends in other texts as well. For example, we used sentiment analysis to study the emotional arcs of more than 1,000 films through their screenplays. The arc of the 2013 Disney film Frozen is shown below.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170258/original/file-20170522-12254-iuyozd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emotional arc for the movie Frozen.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many films show similar patterns: regular peaks and troughs of tension and release, followed by a particularly big trough 80% of the way through the film (all hope is lost!), before the final resolution and happy ending. Applying a similar analysis to novels, we showed that <a href="https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0093-1">most stories follow one of six basic story arcs</a>.</p>
<h2>We’re still not that good at sentiment analysis</h2>
<p>Given that sentiment analysis often relies on mining social media posts, it raises major ethical concerns, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-young-peoples-privacy-as-facebook-claims-it-can-identify-their-anxieties-77054">this debate is only beginnning</a>. Yet the complex nature of language and meaning makes it prone to error.</p>
<p>Take the phrase, “May the force be with you”, which scores 5.35 using our dictionary’s analysis. For any Star Wars fan, it is of course a hugely positive phrase. But it scored modestly in our test because the word “force” is rated a below-average 4.0.</p>
<p>This is understandable when rating this word in isolation, but in context it makes less sense.</p>
<p>Some scepticism of the validity of Facebook’s sentiment analysis capabilities is therefore warranted. It’s entirely conceivable that describing something as “fully sick” on Facebook, a phrase of colloquial endorsement, could lead to an individual’s emotional state being misclassified.</p>
<p>To understand when sentiment analysis does and doesn’t work, it is important to examine the words that drive particular results. </p>
<p>To do this, we use “<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064417#pone-0064417-g010">word shift</a>” diagrams, like the one below for Frozen. This shows which words made the climax of the screenplay sadder than its happy ending: more references to “sadness” and “fear”, but, strangely, more “beautiful”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170259/original/file-20170522-12263-8xhnu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plot comparing the climax of Frozen to its happy ending. The blue bars towards the top of the chart show the top contributing words to the difference in score.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Promise and a warning</h2>
<p>Sentiment analysis is a powerful tool, but it’s only a young science and must be used with caution.</p>
<p>Scientists must develop tools that allow us to peer “under the hood” and understand why certain algorithms produce the results they do. This is the only way to diagnose issues with different methods and, more importantly, to educate the public about the field’s possibilities and limitations.</p>
<p>Sentiment analysis research has largely been built on large, public data sets, particularly from social media. It’s important those of us unwittingly providing the data understand what it can and can’t be used for, and how.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://maths.adelaide.edu.au/people/michelle.edwards">Michelle Edwards</a> contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77401/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lewis Mitchell receives funding from Data to Decisions CRC (D2D CRC), the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS), and the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Policy Relevant Infectious diseases Simulation and Mathematical Modelling (PRISM^2).</span></em></p>Advertisers want to know how you feel online through a process known as sentiment analysis, but it still has its limitations.Lewis Mitchell, Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/739042017-03-08T19:27:10Z2017-03-08T19:27:10ZFace Value: sentiment analysis shows business leaders are positive about the year ahead<p><em>When Australian companies report results they typically include an outlook statement from the business’ leaders, giving investors some guidance about their expectations for the future. They issue these forward-looking statements with some caution as investors might rely on them, and the law requires that they be based on “reasonable grounds”.</em> </p>
<p><em>The Conversation’s Face Value uses sentiment analysis to try and determine how Australian business leaders are feeling about the future.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Heads of Australian companies are reasonably positive in their outlook for the rest of the year, according to our analysis of outlook statements of ASX top 100 companies, reporting results in the past month.</p>
<p>We used <a href="https://www.cs.uic.edu/%7Eliub/FBS/NLP-handbook-sentiment-analysis.pdf">sentiment analysis</a> to identify whether these statements were subjective and, if so, whether the opinions expressed are positive or negative. For the analysis here, we used a manually-crafted dictionary of sentiment keywords. Each keyword had a score for subjectivity and positive or negative sentiment. </p>
<p>So in terms of subjectivity score, numbers near zero indicate factual text and larger numbers indicate opinionated text. Sentiment ranges from -1 to 1 with smaller numbers indicating negative sentiment and larger numbers indicating positive. </p>
<p>We compared the outlook statements from February 2017 to those of the same month in 2016 and the sentiment was stronger in retailing than any other sector (chart below) and had doubled in strength since 2016 when it was not the strongest sector. </p>
<iframe width="100%" height="950" scrolling="no" frameborder="yes" src="https://public.tableau.com/views/SentimentAnalysis2017/Dashboard3?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no"></iframe>
<p>Strong retailing sentiment reflects households spending more due to low interest rates and some additional wealth generated from rising house prices. The job market has been steady, with unemployment <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-16/unemployment-jobs-abs-data-january/8276040">falling slightly</a> in January to 5.7%, although this was due to a rise in part-time rather than full-time jobs. </p>
<p>It seems that sluggish wage growth has apparently not hurt retailing sentiment – the wage price index, a measurement of wages, has struggled to keep pace with inflation, <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyTopic/955FBDF6A933C1FDCA2568A900136286?OpenDocument">growing at 1.9%</a> during calendar 2016 and likely to remain soft in 2017. Yet consumers have maintained their retail spending by <a href="https://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2017/sp-gov-2017-02-22.html">cutting back their saving</a>.</p>
<p>Leaders of companies in the pharmaceuticals, biotech, telecommunication and software sectors were positive again in 2017 with their outlook statements. This could be driven by <a href="http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/pharma-life-sciences/pharma2020/assets/pwc-pharma-success-strategies.pdf">long-term factors</a> such as Australia’s ageing population and associated demand for medicines. </p>
<p>Those in the real estate sector were also positive this year and sentiment improved from 2016, this is likely to be driven partly by buoyant residential and commercial property markets. This is characterised by declining vacancy rates, rising demand for properties and supply constraints.</p>
<p>Sentiment was weakest in the utilities and energy sectors in 2017, this could be because of the market prospects for electricity, gas and oil. Difficulties in the electricity sector in terms of price and reliability of supply have become almost daily news, and policy uncertainty would contribute to the negative sentiment on what the year might bring.</p>
<p>Sentiment in the energy sector deteriorated from 2016 to 2017 reflecting the <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/energy-resources/us-er-2017-oil-and-gas-industry-outlook.pdf">ongoing downturn in the oil and gas sector</a>. Weak oil and gas prices are driven by long-term factors such as the boost in supply from the shale oil production and the growth in renewable energy supported by governments around the world. These factors are not going away any time soon.</p>
<p>In the outlook of banking and financial companies the sentiment has declined in 2017 relative to 2016, as the industry continues to be <a href="http://www.pwc.com.au/publications/assets/major-banks-analysis-11-nov-2016.pdf">pressured</a> by slowing credit growth, falling net interest margins and rising bad debts, as well as regulatory uncertainty.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="950" scrolling="no" frameborder="yes" src="https://public.tableau.com/views/SentimentAnalysis2017/Dashboard1?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no"></iframe>
<p>It’s important to note the subjectivity of these outlook statements, whether they might represent opinions rather than objectively verifiable evidence. This could be an issue, for example, in the retail sector. </p>
<p>Some retail companies such as Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi scored the highest for subjectivity, indicating a lot of opinion in the outlook statements, despite the positive sentiment. Also a few oil and gas companies, with quite negative sentiment, also scored highly for subjectivity. One of the highest subjectivity scores was for Caltex.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="950" scrolling="no" frameborder="yes" src="https://public.tableau.com/views/SentimentAnalysis2017/Dashboard6?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no"></iframe>
<p>Overall however, the positive sentiment in the recent company reporting season is consistent with a range of favourable macroeconomic drivers. The Australian economy is <a href="http://www.rba.gov.au/speeches/2017/sp-gov-2017-02-24.html">expected</a> to grow by around 3% over the next two years. </p>
<p>Mining investment is expected to stop declining, at least if not rise, in the near future. The rise in commodity prices over the past six to 12 months is expected to hold up. </p>
<p>The election of US President Donald Trump and the British exit from the European Union (Brexit) inspired a <a href="http://www.marketindex.com.au/all-ordinaries">bounce in stock markets</a>, this reflects an optimism about the forecast economic impact of these events. In the case of Trump, an infrastructure and tax cut inspired boost to investment spending; and in the case of Brexit, more due to popular optimism about reclaimed sovereignty than rational evidence <a href="https://woodfordfunds.com/economic-impact-brexit-report/">about real economic effects</a>.</p>
<p>Other drivers <a href="https://19-acci.cdn.aspedia.net/sites/default/files/uploaded-content/field_f_content_file/auschamberwestpac2016q4.pdf">include</a> the low Australian dollar, at least lower by 28% from the highest level in 2013. This helps make export and import competing sectors more competitive, which is reflected in a boost in exports and a rise in building and renovation activity. This is also driven by the prospect of ever-increasing real estate prices in our two largest capital cities.</p>
<p>The positive sentiment outlook here also resonates with a range of other positive business confidence analyses over recent months. The <a href="https://au.investing.com/economic-calendar/nab-business-confidence-217">NAB business confidence survey</a> in February reports positive and strongly improving business conditions. The <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7138-roy-morgan-australian-business-confidence-january-2017-201702081623">Roy Morgan monthly business confidence</a> index rose 2.4% in January. </p>
<p>The most recent <a href="https://www.aigroup.com.au/policy-and-research/economics/economicindicators/">Ai Group Indices for Services and Construction</a> were both strong and indicate expansion of these sectors. And the <a href="https://19-acci.cdn.aspedia.net/sites/default/files/uploaded-content/field_f_content_file/auschamberwestpac2016q4.pdf">Australian Chamber-Westpac survey of industrial trends</a> strengthened at end 2016 by almost 5% from the previous quarter.</p>
<p>The above analysis is perhaps a glass half-full viewpoint. Yet we can also point to the ultimate forward looking indicator of the Australian economy – the Australian stock market – as further evidence of good times ahead. The All Ordinaries index of Australian shares was 5811 points on 8 March, an increase of 12% at the same date in 2016. That points to a positive outlook for Australian companies and therefore ultimately for all Australians through their wages, dividends earned by their superannuation funds, and taxes collected by the Australian government on behalf of all households.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Hachey is an employee of and has been granted stock options in Hugo.ai. Ben has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Capital Markets CRC and Google. He is Secretary of the Australasian Language Technology Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ross Guest does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Face Value analyses the sentiment of business leaders in ASX top 100 companies and for 2017 it seems positive, although sometimes highly opinionated.Ross Guest, Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow, Griffith UniversityBen Hachey, Honorary Associate, School of Information Technologies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/331762014-11-04T02:42:50Z2014-11-04T02:42:50ZCollaborations are key to kickstarting your YouTube career<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63250/original/pt257txg-1414630555.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tracking the career of YouTube star Charles Trippy provides some insight into the dynamics of YouTube success.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">YouTube screenshot</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It might be ancient in social media terms but YouTube – which has been around since 2005 – continues to capture popular attention, with a number of internet entrepreneurs successfully building careers for themselves, through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/RomanAtwood">skits</a> or by documenting their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/CTFxC">daily lives</a>. </p>
<p>But from an academic perspective, YouTube is difficult to study. </p>
<p>Lacking the detailed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">API</a> functionality of networks such as Twitter and Facebook, gathering data over time requires interested parties - whether research or commercial - to either take snapshots at regular intervals, or to receive authenticated access to the users own analytics. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SqlnGeSOUuo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">YouTuber Roman Atwood attracts millions of views for prank videos like these.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To build their public profiles, many of these YouTubers rely on platforms other than YouTube. This makes it possible for us to investigate the points in their YouTube career which propelled their profiles. </p>
<p>As Jean Burgess and Joshua Greene have documented in their seminal book on YouTube – <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=0NsWtPHNl88C&">YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture</a> (2013) – once you look beyond the large multinationals and traditional media companies, the “most subscribed” list heavily features “YouTubers” – people who built their careers through the platform. The YouTube star <a href="https://theconversation.com/youtube-games-star-pewdiepie-is-playing-for-global-dominance-32681">PewDiePie</a> is just one example among many. </p>
<p>As they note, achieving this type of success is frequently linked to engagement with the YouTube community. Often this engagement goes beyond YouTube itself, and into platforms such as Twitter.</p>
<p>Previously, we have used <a href="http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5211">Accession Charts</a> as a way of measuring follower growth on Twitter. This methodology is also useful as a proxy for users on other platforms. Essentially, we are able to estimate the date at which a particular user followed a Twitter account by using the date a user joined the platform combined with the order in which they followed the target account. </p>
<p>The below chart, for YouTuber Charles Trippy, who has channels for both <a href="https://www.youtube.com/charlestrippy">skits</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/CTFxC">vlogs</a>, is an example of this.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63122/original/q7v9ghxy-1414551769.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to being a member of the band <a href="http://www.wethekingsmusic.com/">We The Kings</a>, Charles is also a daily vlogger with five YouTube channels, including his main channel CTFxC which receives between 300,000 and 2 million viewers per video on average. In the graph above we have mapped his growth in Twitter followers to key events in his YouTube career, including a spike around a proposal video he posted in 2009, which went viral across both online and traditional media.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WTwhipqaAfY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Charles Trippy is a model YouTuber.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other spikes were also linked to key events; on 20 November 2011 Charles and partner Alli married, with their wedding hashtag #CTFxCWedding trending worldwide. That caused a steep incline in followers in short period of time. A 2012 announcement that Charles had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and his vlog of the actual brain surgery, caused a further increase in followers on Twitter. (It also hit <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2425073/Blogger-Charles-Trippy-films-brain-surgery-latest-internet-hit.html">traditional media</a>).</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XqVpqMv2YUo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The CTFxC channel has obviously connected with people on a personal level, with peaks being related to serious, personal situations that allow users to feel such a connection. </p>
<p>Collaborations also cause a noticeable increase. </p>
<p>In the case of Charles Trippy, an April 2013 collaboration with popular YouTubers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/PrankvsPrank">PrankVsPrank</a> shows a noticeably different pattern to his general growth, with a larger proportion of Twitter users with older accounts (presumably PrankVsPrank subscribers) beginning to follow, as seen in the graph below:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63123/original/3pqvxb6m-1414551939.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The importance of collaborations is even more evident for smaller YouTubers, as seen on the below graph for Canadian YouTuber <a href="https://www.youtube.com/coreyvidal">Corey Vidal</a>, who also records both skits and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/ApprenticeEh">vlogs</a> with his production company, Apprentice A, as well as organising <a href="http://bufferfestival.com/">Buffer Festival</a>:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63125/original/qfcc5qnm-1414552080.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The two key growth periods here (October 2011 & January 2013) are directly related to collaborations; firstly the filming of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDqlyF2VADs">Charles Trippy wedding video</a>, and secondly the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiu7svBkik">announcement</a> of the motion picture “I’m Vlogging Here” (now “Vlogumentary”) in collaboration with ShayCarl:</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gVvCA-q64Oo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>For those featured in the Vlogumentary video, many of whom are reported to earn six figure incomes through YouTube, the maintenance of a personal relationship with the audience is significant. It leads to the establishment of a loyal audience; indeed, many of the most consistently successful YouTubers are the daily vloggers. </p>
<p>On the flip side however, Charles Trippy’s subsequent break-up with Alli Speed led to <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/ctfxc-youtube-stars-charles-alli-trippy-announce-separation-viewers-mourn-vlogging-duos-1569457">strong reactions</a> from their viewers, and the impact of this on follower growth will be interesting to monitor. </p>
<p>The take-home: for newcomers, and those looking to build YouTube careers, making connections and collaborations with established YouTubers is a great place to start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33176/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darryl Woodford receives funding from QUTBluebox for the development of commercial social media analytics.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Prowd receives funding from QUTBluebox for the development of commercial social media analytics.</span></em></p>It might be ancient in social media terms but YouTube – which has been around since 2005 – continues to capture popular attention, with a number of internet entrepreneurs successfully building careers…Darryl Woodford, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of TechnologyKatie Prowd, Assistant Data Analyst, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.