Google, Obama and God: good. H1N1, Elsevier and Merck: bad.
(see the previous post for background on these tables)
Entities associated with negative emotions
| Term | Sum score | Blogs mentioning entity |
| H1N1 | -7.50 | 15 |
| Elsevier | -4.52 | 5 |
| Merck | -3.79 | 8 |
| CDC | -2.34 | 7 |
| Dana | -2.00 | 2 |
| Japan | -2.00 | 2 |
| McCaffery | -2.00 | 2 |
| WSJ | -2.00 | 2 |
| Sci | -1.98 | 3 |
| Jacqui Smith | -1.54 | 2 |
| James Corbett | -1.51 | 2 |
| Israel | -1.50 | 2 |
| iPhone | -1.33 | 2 |
| Alzheimer | -1.19 | 2 |
| HIV | -1.12 | 2 |
H1N1 is the subtype of the "swine flu" influenza virus.
Elsevier and Merck published fake journals in Australia, "Dana" is Dana McCafferty, who tragically died of whooping cough because of the low vaccination rates in New South Wales.
"WSJ" is the Wall Street Journal which published a flawed explanation of quantum entanglement that got picked up by physics bloggers. Jacqui Smith is the UK's home secretary, currently under fire for (amongst other things) keeping the DNA of innocent people on file for six years after their arrest.
James Corbett is the teacher in California who told his students that creationism was "superstitious nonsense" - he was later sued by a student who believed that their first amendment rights had been violated.
The iPhone is in there because of changes to App Store policies that may impact smaller developers.
Positive emotions after the break.
Entities associated with positive emotions
| Term | Sum score | Blogs mentioning entity |
| 5.52 | 7 | |
| Obama | 4.96 | 8 |
| God | 3.28 | 5 |
| 2.66 | 11 | |
| RDF | 2.59 | 2 |
| CERN | 2.21 | 3 |
| NASA | 2.20 | 5 |
| Pfizer | 2.02 | 3 |
| Medical Discovery | 2.00 | 2 |
| Roger Tsien | 1.97 | 2 |
| TED | 1.90 | 2 |
| PNAS | 1.88 | 2 |
| FDA | 1.78 | 3 |
| Hubble | 1.71 | 2 |
| Scienceblogs | 1.70 | 3 |
These are less fun, I think.
The top four are in there because they get mentioned lots in a mildly positive emotional context. I was surprised to see "God" in there - maybe the sentiment analysis is thrown by phrases like "thank God" and "God knows"?
TED talks get a good rap. Roger Tsien is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry - he just published a new report in Science on using fluorescent proteins in mice.
Comments
I think there are about two people at Nature Network who are single-handedly responsible for that positive Twitter score. Mind you, i-phone isn't on there, so perhaps my theory is wrong.
Posted by: Maxine | May 12, 2009 02:06 PM
Gosh, I see now - iphone is a negative! (I only looked on the positive list.) I suspect that the emotional temperature of the list doesn't include Nature Network, which would have easily redressed the balance in the plus direction.
Posted by: Maxine | May 13, 2009 01:21 PM