Positive Sentiment Dominates Metaverse Social Media Posts
A group of researchers from the United Arab Emirates conducted a study to explore public opinions about the metaverse on social media. They gathered a data set of 86,565 posts from a specific social media platform and utilized machine learning to categorize them based on sentiment: positive, neutral, and negative. The researchers found that the majority of posts expressed positive sentiments about the metaverse, accounting for 53% of the total. Neutral sentiment posts constituted 33%, while negative sentiment posts made up 14% of the data.
An example of a positive post included in the study mentioned the excitement of building the metaverse, while a negative post questioned the concept, preferring real-life interactions over interacting with irritating non-playable characters. The researchers found that positive and negative sentiments followed certain language patterns, while neutral sentiment posts did not exhibit any clear patterns.
These findings offered promising signs for the metaverse’s adoption. Previous studies using machine learning to analyze metaverse sentiment achieved around 88% accuracy, but the UAE team’s models achieved up to 92.6% accuracy, making it one of the most comprehensive analyses of public sentiment regarding the metaverse to date. It is important to note that this research is a preprint and has not undergone peer review.
Future research will expand on various social media platforms, including Meta and Reddit, while also incorporating offline surveys to gain a more comprehensive understanding of public sentiment. The researchers acknowledge that their study’s scope was limited to posts containing the specific keyword “metaverse,” therefore excluding relevant social media discussions that did not include the keyword.
