Language independent sentiment analysis of the Shukran social network using apache spark

This paper describes theShukran Sentiment Analysis system. TheShukran is a social network micro-blogging service that allows users posting photos or videos and descriptions of their daily life activities. This social network rapidly gained a large amount of users. It provides people from different cultures and countries the possibility to share in different languages their stories, ideas, opinions, and news from their real life, and makes the cultural diversity the center of relationships between its users. Sentiment analysis aims to extract the opinion of the public about some topic by processing text data. One of its several tasks, the polarity detection, aims at categorizing the elements in a dataset (sentences, posts, etc.) into classes such as positive, negative and neutral. In the system we propose, and that represents the sentiment analysis core engine of theShukran social network, we will detect the original language of users posts, translate them into English and evaluate their sentiment (whether positive, negative or neutral). We propose the use of a Naive Bayes classifier and SentiWordNet and SenticNet for the sentiment evaluation. The language detection and translation are performed using TextBlob, a Python library for processing textual data

War in Gaza: a cross-cultural analysis of news reporting and reception

One of the most controversial wars in contemporary history, both in terms of the ideological powers behind it and its continued struggle for over 60 years, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The most recent outburst of the conflict, commonly known as the Gaza War, has attracted extensive global media coverage. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis incorporates an extensive content analysis, to chart patterns and regularities within a large corpus of four broadcast media (namely BBC Arabic, BBC World, Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English). It then integrates a more interpretative discourse analysis, to investigate the cultural ideas evoked linguistically and, to a lesser extent, visually throughout the coverage. Assuming a qualitative stance, it also draws upon focus groups conducted in Jordan and England to examine the public s knowledge and understandings of the events on the ground, in addition to their evaluation of both organisations levels of objectivity and impartiality. To allow for a comparative dimension, the thesis develops two frames of analysis that systematically looks at two recurring themes and scrutinises their discursive strategies and functions in the construction of meaning and ideology. These include Provocation, which examines questions of responsibility and culpability; and Proportionality which embraces matters of legitimacy and authority in relation to the humanitarian aspect of the war. The findings indicate that the actions of a protagonist may be deemed legitimate with regard to provocation, but illegitimate with regard to their proportionality. The peculiar circumstances of the war pushed the media in the direction of greater separation from the predominant ideologies ensued by the Israeli Army. It suggests that both networks lack a coherent discursive strategy at the level of the lexical in their reporting of Gaza. The empirical findings also confirm that meanings devised by viewers are pertinent to their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs. This conceptualisation formulated three readings shaped by political, cultural and social formations: an oppositional (counter-hegemonic) reading, a dominant reading and a subliminal (sub-conscious) reading

Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements

The Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements offers a multinational study of Islam, its variants, influences, and neighbouring movements, from a multidisciplinary range of scholars. These chapters highlight the diversity of Islam, especially in its contemporary manifestations, as a religion of many communities, theologies, and ideologies. Over five sections—on Sunni, Shia, Sufi, fundamentalist, and fringe Islamic movements—the authors provide historical overviews, analyses, and in-depth studies of large and small Islamic and related groups from all around the world. The contents of this volume will be of interest to both newcomers to the study of Islam and established scholars of religion who wish to engage with the dynamic label of Islam and the many impactful movements of the Islamic world