136041 AR Emotion analysis in social media (2021W)

Language inenvitable transports and encodes emotion, and this particularly holds true for language used in the social media. For example, the methodological field of sentiment analysis focuses on valence, i.e., on how positive or negative a text is perceived. In this course, students will learn how to measure emotional properties of text data (primarily using unsupervised emotion classification/inference techniques that build on lexica of emotion norms and labels). After a theoretical and methodological introduction, students will work on their own project in groups.

In this course, we will use the coding language R for doing our analyses. Strictly speaking, no preliminary knowledge in R is required (tutorials will be provided), but some experience in any programming/coding language will certainly help. Also, basic knowledge of linguistics (e.g. word categories) and mathematics (at Matura level; e.g. fractions, percentages, probabilities, linear functions,...) will be taken for granted.