Social media and public administration: social sentiment analysis about the performance of the Brazilian Federal Government

Abstract

This study sought to identify as sentiment analysis, based on texts taken social media can be a measuring instrument of public opinion on the government’s performance in order to contribute to the evaluation of public administration. This is an applied study, interdisciplinary, exploratory, qualitative and quantitative. The main theoretical and conceptual formulations on the subject were reviewed and conducted practical demonstrations using an opinion mining tool which provided satisfactory precision in data processing. For demonstration purposes, themes were selected that motivated the wave of protests involving millions of people in Brazil in June 2013. They were collected, processed and analyzed approximately 130,000 messages posted on Facebook and Twitter on these topics in two distinct periods. Through this analysis, it was observed that the sentiment analysis can reveal the polarized opinions of citizens about the government’s performance.

Keywords
Sentiment analysis; Opinion mining; Public administration; Social media; Public opinion