Sentiment Analysis of Portuguese Political Parties Communication

Abstract

Political communication in social media has gained increasing importance in the last years. In this study, we analyze the political parties' communication on Twitter and understand the sentiment of their communication. First by identifying their communication performance regarding the daily number of tweets, favorite tweets, number of retweets per day and per political party. We present a sentiment analysis by the political party using tweets data. In this study, we propose an explanatory model with the main drivers of retweets. To conduct this study, our approach used data analysis and machine learning techniques methods. Results indicate the main determinants that influence future retweets of political posts globally. Here we present a comparison of the communication content between tweets posts and the political parties' programs available on their institutional websites. We identify the similarities between tweets and formal programs per party and among all parties. This study contributes to analyze the coherence and effectiveness of the political parties' communication.