Can be utilized as sensing the emotional atmosphere around social issues

Hanyang University's joint research team (Professor Choi Yong-suk, Kim Han-sung, Son Dong-young) developed an 'Emotion Map' that measures the real-time emotions of Korean society according to regions and cities around the country. The map shows seven emotions such as anxiety, anger, revulsion, joy, surprise, and sadness, which are visualized by the density of colors. For example, in an area where the feeling of surprise is high is shown in a dark green color, while the low leveled area is shown in light green.
 
The joint research team developed the automatically categorizing system that judges the emotions shown from the writings that social media users post online. The team published a paper to explain the categorizing system. The paper was published in the SSCI(Social Science Citation Index) level journal, 「Social Science Computer Review」.
 
The joint research team proved its validity by collecting around 2.7 million Twitter posts and using the time and location data from Statistics Korea.
<Anxiety Emotion Level from March~May, 2020> For areas that had a higher number of COVID-19 patients during last March~April, the level of anxiety occurred to be higher than the average anxiety level of Korea.
 
<Joy Emotion Level from March~May, 2020> The level of joy in the areas during the same period is lower than the average level of other areas.

The research outcome and the emotion map can be used as the thermometer that measures the public's emotions on social-political issues, as well as sensing social atmosphere around other social issues such as economic inequality, political polarization, youth unemployment, and more. The emotion map can be used by anyone, which is accessible through the research center website. (Website URL: http://sentimap.hanyang.ac.kr/)

Meanwhile, the joint research team is part of the Leading Research Center (CRC) that is supported by the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea. The CRC is conducting combined research of the social science and data science field, to understand and solve complex social issues in this hyper-connected society. 13 professors within and outside the country and many other researchers are participating in the research, from fields such as social science and computer science. 
 
Screenshot of the Emotion Map of the Website



Global News Team
global@hanyang.ac.kr
Translation by: Lee Won-young
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