TechCrunch first reported on Cognovi Labs back in June when the Dayton, Ohio-based analytics startup correctly predicted the Brexit outcome hours ahead of the final vote and counter to what traditional polling had suggested was going to happen.
Tonight, the company is partnering with Applied Policy Research Institute and the Kno.e.sis Center at Wright State University and has set up a war room of 30+ political and technical experts to studythe presidential debate, in real-time, totrack how Twitter chatter is expressing the emotional mood of the nation.
I found this pretty interesting, so I asked them ifI could get a feed of their results andupdate this story as they post them. They agreed, so if you are also interested, just bookmark this story and refresh it as you watch and well see what happens.
The tool the company uses to determine emotional segmentation is called Twitris. It was developed at Wright State University and is able to take large swaths of Twitter data and not only deduce sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) but can also add a layer of emotional response on top of that sentiment. Many companies already do sentiment analysis, but Cognovi Labs emotional analysis is what they claim to be their novel technology.
For example, the startupcan suck in all the Twitter data that is expressed as a reaction to an event, like a presidential debate, and then determine how many people felt positively about that, negatively about it or neutral. Then, within those sentiment divisions, they can determine emotional response that lay in eachdivision.
Here is a data sample they took about how people are expressing emotion about each presidential candidate over the last 8 days:
Cognovi Labs is also able to segment by location, as well, so they can see where on a map these specific emotions are being felt.
So load up this page while you tune in tonight and Ill update it withemotional data thats being pumped out as this debate happens.
LATEST DATA
8:05 pm
Ahead of the debate, the emotions being expressed on Twitter about the candidates are listed abovein aggregate. With Trump, the emotion being most expressed is Joy (40.05%). With Clinton the emotion being most expressed is Anger (43.59%). I have questions of course like,are the same people that are expressing joy for one candidate the same people that areexpressing disdain for the other? Or are these unique users?
I heard back from Cognovi Labs about this. The logged infoisbased on single emotions. For example it could be the same user that issuesa tweet that says Hillary rules and Trump sucks. However that will be counted as Joy for Hillary and Anger for Trumptwo separate emotions would be logged.
9:06 pm
And here we go. The debate has started.
9:26 pm
Latest update. When it comes to Tradein terms of general sentimentpositive, negative or neutralDonald Trump is receiving higher positive sentiment on Twitter, following the discussion, according to Cognovi Labs.
9:43 pm
Latest update. Here is the general Twitter sentiment tracked by Cognovi Labs, based on the first 20 minutes of the debate that focused jobs, trade, budget (prosperity).
9:58 pm
Latest update. Emotional sentiment data for the debate so far. Some changes are visible when compared to pre-debate emotional sentiment in the chart at the top.
10:06
This is a sentiment update that shows a drop in sentiment for Hillary Clinton thatcorresponds with her comment that I have prepared for the debate, and you know what I have also prepared to be president.
10:13
Mostly negative tweets for both candidates. Cognovi Labs points out that Trump supporters are way more active on Twitter.
