A Method for Analyzing Influence of Emotions of Posts in SNS Conversations

We devised a method for analyzing communication, which focuses on influences between two sequential posts in a conversation on a social-network service (SNS). Posts expressed on an SNS are classified into three emotions: positive, negative, or neutral. Two influences were analyzed: the emotion of a person´s preceding post on the emotion of a post from another person, and the emotion of a person´s post on the emotion of a subsequent post from the same person. To analyze these influences, the basis of the frequency of emotional transitions of two sequential posts in actual conversational data is evaluated by probability and information entropy analysis. Three tendencies were found: first, a person who posted positively before is likely to post positively again, second, a neutral emotion of a person´s post is more likely to be induced when both that person and another person expressed a neutral emotion in the past, third, negative posts do not have a strong influence on the emotion of subsequent posts of that person and other persons. These findings may be useful, for example, in promoting positive conversations.