Exploring a University’s official Twitter Hashtag: Performing a Sentiment and Semantic Network Analysis.

Abstract

This research is an exploration of how Southeastern’s official Twitter hashtag has been used since its inception in 2013. Using Python’s Tweepy module to retrace/scrape 765 tweets from Twitter’s public API, and then using Python's Textblob module to perform sentiment analysis of the tweet content, we found 53% of the tweet contents are positive, 45% are neutral, and 2% are negative. We then performed a semantic network analysis of the tweet data using Leximancer, a text analytics tool. From this analysis, we assert the content may be categorized into three key areas: promotional, informational, and warning. The semantic network shows @GoSoutheastern (the university’s sports Twitter handle) using #se1909 and #werolltovictory to promote university athletics. In addition, the semantic network shows #didyouknow associated with informational content highlighting current students and alumni. Finally, the semantic network shows a concentration of words associated with weather warnings.