Semantic orientation of words

This a technical problem discussed in Social Media Analysis 10-802 in Spring 2010.

In sentiment analysis, this refers to the problem of automatically classifying words or phrases (often, just adjectives) as generally "thumbs up" or "thumbs down".

I use the term "generally" here because often the semantic orientation of a word is context-dependent: for instance, "unpredictable" is good if it refers to a movie's plot, not so good if it refers to a car's steering.

See the Class Meeting for 10-802 01/14/2010