Document Type
Thesis
First Faculty Advisor
Suhong Li
Second Faculty Advisor
Tingting Zhao
Keywords
environmental policy; sentiment analysis; topic analysis; data science
Publisher
Bryant University
Rights Management
CC - BY - NC - ND
Abstract
An increased focus on access to general data as well as a continued lack of usable environmental data have resulted in an odd phenomenon where the public does not have the opportunity to understand their environment on a deep level. The goal of this research is to understand, as a result, how people both talk and feel about certain environmental changes, particularly those in the realm of politics. Through word clouds and sentiment analysis performed with historical Twitter data collected between 2010 and 2022, we can identify the general trends in both conversation and feeling as they relate to a digital public space and its interaction with the environmental and political worlds around it. Eleven major environmental policies were identified to help conduct the analysis. The research resulted in several major findings: political figures, such as presidents, land at the forefront of most relevant conversations; the environmental aspects that come with the policies at hands are rarely discussed; conversations do change to reflect new policy enactment, and they do so for an extended period of time; negative emotions are typically the most expressed in this context; the general reaction to new policy enactment was found to be significantly positive; sentiment tends to change quickly and will do so regardless of how the public feels about a given policy.
Comments
This research was conducted to help understand the relationship between environmental policy and subsequent emotional reactions and discussions to discover how the public views these policies.