Sentiment Analysis in Digital Spaces: An Overview of Reviews
Laura E. M. Ayravainen Joanne Hinds Brittany I. Davidson
Sentiment analysis (SA) is commonly applied to digital textual data,
revealing insight into opinions and feelings. Many systematic reviews have
summarized existing work, but often overlook discussions of validity and
scientific practices. Here, we present an overview of reviews, synthesizing 38
systematic reviews, containing 2,275 primary studies. We devise a bespoke
quality assessment framework designed to assess the rigor and quality of
systematic review methodologies and reporting standards. Our findings show
diverse applications and methods, limited reporting rigor, and challenges over
time. We discuss how future research and practitioners can address these issues
and highlight their importance across numerous applications.