Sentiment analysis of online user comments on artificial meat

Abstract

Artificial meat is a sustainable protein source that has riveted attention recently. However, differences of opinion have led to the need for more research on the issue. The controversy complicates the assessment of whether or not artificial meat will potentially be consumed in the future. This study aimed to determine the emotional states of YouTube users toward artificial meat. For this purpose, YouTube was used as a considerable data source in determining individuals' emotions and opinions. User comments on popular videos about “artificial meat” shared on online were evaluated using sentiment analysis (SA). They were classified as positive, neutral, and negative according to their polarity scores in the lexicon-based SA method. Analysis results demonstrated that 11,113 (40.8%) of the user comments were positive, 9,054 (33.2%) were negative, and 7,064 (25.9%) were neutral. The most frequently repeated words were “meat, eat, and like,” while the most frequent negative words were “fake, cancer, synthetic and expensive” respectively.