Using Twitter to Characterize Public Opinion in Brazil During Political Events

AbstractIn this work, the authors characterize Brazilian online population sentiment on different political events using data from Twitter and discuss the advantages of the usage of this social media as a data source. The results demonstrated that the Brazilian population uses Twitter to manifest their political view, expressing both positive and negative sentiments regarding political events. This kind of characterization may contribute to build a critical opinion of Brazilian people, once they would not be limited by what is being divulgated by typical media, such as television and newspapers. Additionally, the authors reinforced the applicability of social media, as Twitter, to make this kind of characterization.