NEC Develops Technology that Extracts Opinions from Text Data

NEC Corporation announced today the development of a "sentence characteristic distribution calculation method" that extracts "opinion sentences" from written text which expresses the feelings or subjective views of a writer, or "topic-related sentences," which are concerned with a specific issue. This technology is designed for analyzing sentences that feature individuals' evaluations of corporate brands or products (reputation information) in a wide range of written content that includes blogs, questionnaires and others.

In order to judge whether a sentence should be considered an opinion sentence or a topic-related sentence, this newly developed method focuses on the continuity of topics, and calculates the subjectivity or topicality of several sentences that appear before or after the target sentence.

For example, this method could determine an individual's ideas, calculate evaluation scores, or determine the ratio of approval vs. disapproval regarding a certain event, product, or service, from information on the Internet, such as blogs, electronic bulletin boards, questionnaire data, or records of inquiries at call centers. This information could then be used for corporate marketing activities.

Source: NEC Corporation