Predicting Movie Sales from Blogger Sentiment

The main finding is that positive sentiment is indeed a better predictor for movie success when applied to a limited context around references to the movie in weblogs, posted prior to its release.

Abstract

The volume of discussion about a product in weblogs has recently been shown to correlate with the product’s financial performance. In this paper, we study whether applying sentiment analysis methods to weblog data results in better correlation than volume only, in the domain of movies. Our main finding is that positive sentiment is indeed a better predictor for movie success when applied to a limited context around references to the movie in weblogs, posted prior to its release. If my film makes one more person miserable, I’ve done my job. – Woody Allen