[robhawkes]

Thank you.

In the context of this study, I found that it was impossible to accurately infer 'sentiment' of a single tweet or person (not just because of sarcasm and other nuances). However, when you take the average of a group (wisdom of the crowd) then the results are much more promising. A trends noticed across thousands of users is also more interesting than the potentially unreliable sentiment of a single person.

In this case, I suppose it is definitely just the words that are being analysed – not true 'sentiment.' I wouldn't rule it out as inaccurate though, it just depends what you're looking for and how you use the results. Compared to other sentiment data-sets, the ANEW approach seems more more detailed (the original scorings are created from human tagging).

I do agree though, that automated approaches can be inaccurate if you're looking for fine-level analysis.

[jsiarto]

Completely agree--we always start our analysis with basic questions the client wants answered. I also appreciate how in-depth your piece was--we need more research and case studies like this. If I have to listen to one more social monitoring tool salesperson tell me how amazing their sentiment analysis is without ever showing concrete examples and results...