ABSTRACT

Genetically modified organisms or GMOs offer significant advantages in food production, including increased yield, decreased pesticide usage, and better disease resistance. However, adoption and public sentiment toward GMOs is highly variable. Without positive sentiment toward GMOs, consumption of GMO-based foods may not have an adequate market for further investment. In order to better understand overall public sentiment toward GMO-based foods, a Boolean search was created using a commercial web-crawling service to collect and analyze public sentiment of GMOs across multiple social media and web-based services from May 1, 2019, to May 31, 2021. The Boolean query identified 2 million mentions of GMOs during the study period. Using the commercial software’s sentiment analysis (i.e. classifying mentions as either neutral, negative, or positive), 54% of the mentions were categorized as having a neutral sentiment, 32% as having a negative sentiment, and 14% as having a positive sentiment. Further emotional analysis (classifying posts by the emotion expressed, e.g., disgust, joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise) produced by the software shows that the majority of the mentions were categorized as expressing a negative emotion: 31% of mentions expressed disgust, 28% joy, 18% sadness, 16% anger, 7% fear, and 1% surprise. Among the various social media sources collected, Twitter was the main source of data, providing 62% of the total 2 million mentions, followed by 14% from news sources and 12% from Reddit. These types of data can be used to better understand trends in sentiment toward GMOs and ultimately play an important role in combating mis-information.

摘要

转基因生物或转基因生物在食品生产中具有显着优势，包括提高产量、减少杀虫剂用量和更好的抗病性。然而，对转基因生物的采用和公众情绪变化很大。如果没有对转基因生物的积极情绪，转基因食品的消费可能没有足够的市场来进行进一步投资。为了更好地了解公众对转基因食品的整体情绪，使用商业网络爬虫服务创建了一个布尔搜索，以收集和分析从 2019 年 5 月 1 日到 2019 年 5 月 1 日至2021 年 5 月 31 日。布尔查询在研究期间确定了 200 万次提及转基因生物。使用商业软件的情绪分析（即将提及分类为中性、负面或正面），54% 的提及被归类为具有中性情绪，32% 被归类为具有负面情绪，14% 被归类为具有积极情绪。该软件产生的进一步情绪分析（根据表达的情绪对帖子进行分类，例如厌恶、快乐、悲伤、愤怒、恐惧、惊讶）表明，大多数提及被归类为表达负面情绪：31% 的提及表达厌恶，28%的快乐，18%的悲伤，16%的愤怒，7%的恐惧，1%的惊喜。在收集的各种社交媒体来源中，Twitter 是主要的数据来源，提供了 200 万次提及总数的 62%，其次是新闻来源和 Reddit 的 14% 和 12%。这些类型的数据可用于更好地了解人们对转基因生物的看法趋势，并最终在打击错误信息方面发挥重要作用。