Sentiment Analysis in Urban Planning

Description

Language is complex; it has many intricacies in the duality of meaning, the emotional weight of words, and the intonation in which it is expressed. In urban planning, the clear expression of information from planner to community stakeholders is essential; without this mutual understanding of a project, misunderstandings may arise. This research strives to understand the relationship between the phrasing of information conveyed in a planning meeting and the community's understanding of this material. Is there a way to investigate the relationship (or lack thereof) of planner's wording or intonation of planning information, and do either of these variables affect the connotation of the phrase at large? Does this imply a different understanding of the project when presented to a community member than the planner initially intended? These are the questions that I am working to answer through my data collection, which I am in the process of conducting. I have determined that the best way to investigate this relationship is through an online survey, where participants will be shown a short planning video with a connotation that is positive, negative, or neutral. These participants will then be asked reflection questions to gather information on their thoughts and opinions of the video. This data will be recorded and coded through linguistic analysis techniques, including a basic sentiment analysis. These result will be compared to the baseline sentiment and sentic analysis of the video to determine if there are any trigger words or phrases that may favor a certain response over another. These findings will culminate into suggestions for the phrasing and conveying of information for the planning community. This study would be instrumental for planners since part of the job effectively communicating information to others.