With the development of Internet technology and the innovation of new media applications, people are increasingly inclined to express their opinions, spread their needs, and share various information through social media such as Weibo, WeChat, and Douyin short videos.
Nowadays, netizens express their opinions on any topic on the Internet, put forward their own suggestions and opinions, and sometimes even set off a lot of "Internet storms."
At the moment, public opinion collects, processes, and mines the value, and gains insight into various opinions, emotions, word of mouth, and people’s sentiments. It can provide businesses with business data and intelligence, and help businesses make smarter decision-making; it can also dig out the social status quo for the government. Harmonize public opinion and public sentiments, and improve the overall level of social governance.
1. The characteristics of public opinion analysis
1. Data is redundant
First of all, from the perspective of the basic attributes of data, public opinion information, including text, graphics, video, audio, etc., all belong to unstructured data. Secondly, there is a large amount of data and many data sources. With the rapid development of online social media in recent years, there are more and more open social platforms. Compared with ten years ago, people can express their opinions on more platforms.
The data source of public opinion analysis needs to cover almost all public information on the Internet, not only domestic media and social platforms, but also various foreign media and social platforms.
2. High demand
The common Internet industry, financial industry, real estate industry, education industry, catering industry, and various consumer goods industries are all industries that focus on public opinion analysis and have strong public relations capabilities.
At the same time, in government departments, with the development of e-government, public opinion monitoring and public opinion analysis capabilities have also received great attention. The public opinion monitoring and analysis system provides various social public opinion information for the government agencies at all levels and various departments at the first time.
In the final analysis, "data is a gold mine." The greatest utility of public opinion monitoring, analysis, and management is the big data analysis and value mining of public information on the Internet, providing assistance for the intelligent decision-making of governments and enterprises, and achieving greater social and economic benefits. benefit.
Therefore, public opinion analysis is needed in all walks of life.
3. High added value
As mentioned in the previous point, data is a gold mine, and the results of public opinion analysis can help the government and enterprises achieve greater social and economic benefits in some matters.
Public opinion analysis can provide governments and enterprises with multi-dimensional data analysis and high value-added information insights, specifically:
1) Negative news mining
The core point of public opinion monitoring is the data mining of negative news. If negative information cannot be found in a timely and accurate manner and allowed to ferment and grow, the consequences will be unimaginable. The government’s credibility has been seriously questioned, the economic interests of enterprises have suffered huge losses, and the entire social situation will suffer considerable turmoil.
2) Word-of-mouth information mining
For example, when a tea brand launched a new tea drink, the company's biggest concern is often sales and word of mouth. A good word of mouth can bring about a substantial increase in overall sales, which is why word of mouth marketing is so popular nowadays.
Targeted word-of-mouth monitoring of a product can help companies improve their products, adjust marketing strategies in time, and increase product satisfaction.
3) Information mining of competing products
For existing or potential competing companies on the market, information monitoring, intelligence mining, and analysis of the data value behind them can usually help companies better grasp the initiative in market competition.
4) Analysis of major events
Whether it is a hot network event or a product marketing event, by analyzing the spread of the event, monitoring the development context of the event, digging out the explosion of public opinion behind it, and mastering the spread of the event, it can provide a data basis for the rapid processing of the event and the analysis of the spread effect.
5) Mining people’s livelihood information
For government departments, the most important thing is to monitor people's livelihood and public opinion. Through the monitoring of public opinion on hot online events, it is possible to understand the public’s comments, emotions, and communication methods, and provide good decision-making assistance for government departments to guide and control public opinion.
Especially during the time when the new crown epidemic broke out at the beginning of this year, the monitoring of public opinion on people's livelihood reached a peak.
4. Complex technology
Public opinion monitoring and analysis requires not only powerful data collection and processing capabilities, but also powerful data mining capabilities. It faces considerable technical challenges. The main technical difficulties are as follows:
1) Comprehensiveness
Public opinion monitoring and analysis need to cover almost all Internet information. The data collection system must ensure that data is collected comprehensively without omission. A powerful data collection system is the basic guarantee for public opinion monitoring.
2) Timeliness
In the Internet environment, public opinion information spreads extremely fast, and public opinion monitoring and analysis is in a race against the speed of the Internet. Both the government and enterprises need to grasp the dynamics of public opinion in the first time, real-time warning, rapid analysis, and timely response.
3) Accuracy
In addition to timeliness, the target data must be retrieved accurately. In the face of massive public opinion data, the public opinion data analysis system must not only find relevant information, but also eliminate the interference of invalid information and match the monitoring data to the greatest extent.
4) Richness
In addition to the basic accurate data screening, the public opinion data analysis system also needs to have more powerful data information mining capabilities. For example, it is necessary to perform label mining, geographic judgment, information classification, etc. on data information to maximize the added value behind the data information.
2. Traditional data analysis technology helps public opinion analysis
First, let's look at the traditional data analysis process: data collection, data cleaning, data transformation, data mining, model evaluation, and visualization.
Due to the timeliness of public opinion analysis, data needs to be collected from the Internet in real time. The analysis results need to be output and presented in real time, and the entire data mining process needs to be interspersed in the entire information flow.
Public opinion information is streamed into the data analysis system, standardized data is processed through ETL, and then entered into the data mining process, and various machine learning algorithm models are used for analysis and evaluation.
After the mining results are visualized, they are presented to users in the form of real-time data analysis reports or real-time data large screens.
In addition, the entire data analysis system needs to have dynamic intervention capabilities to ensure the consistency of data mining rules and models. Compared with the static process of traditional data analysis, the analysis and mining of public opinion data is an uninterrupted and real-time process.
3. New data analysis technologies bring new developments in public opinion analysis
1. SaaS product assistance
With the growth of self-media and the growth of Internet communication speed, the popularity of Internet public opinion continues to ferment. Public opinion analysis SaaS products can help governments and enterprises build their own public opinion analysis systems faster and quickly enter the market for public opinion analysis.
Traditional public opinion analysis has relatively single scenes and modes, and requires higher precision in online public opinion analysis, which is becoming more differentiated and individualized. Under the standard model of SaaS products, it is becoming more and more important to implement platform-based refined operations for different industries and different scenarios.
Only by making good use of platform tools, building a closed-loop system for public opinion analysis, and building a product matrix for refined operations, can the government and enterprises truly tap into the ultra-high added value behind public opinion analysis.
2. Real-time data big screen help
With the development of data visualization technology , large data screens have become more and more popular in recent years, especially in the area of data monitoring, which has attracted the focus of government and enterprises. One of the biggest features of large data screens is: real-time data, timely prediction, and rapid response.
For example, in the big screen of public opinion analysis of the ancient city of Liangzhu, the contents of three parts: hot search for tourists in the scenic spot, hot search on Weibo, and emergency command information processing are displayed. Through the monitoring of online public opinion, timely response and safety assurance of emergency command in scenic spots can be carried out.
3. AI deep analysis help
With the rapid development of AI in recent years, various technical frameworks and analysis methods have emerged, providing new technologies, new methods, and new tools for public opinion analysis and mining.
Not only limited to basic text analysis such as word segmentation, entity recognition, emotion judgment, and keyword extraction, technologies such as active event discovery, intelligent early warning and prediction, and intelligent information retrieval have also entered people's field of vision.
At the same time, the development of AI technology has accelerated the engineering realization of model algorithms. New models and new algorithms can replace the manual part of public opinion services to reduce a lot of public opinion analysis costs.